Oracle consultation and extinct omen divination

1. Introduction

Version followed: the historians' and primary-text account of ancient oracle consultation and omen divination given by Eidinow (2007, and her 2020 essay) for Dodona; Plutarch's Delphic dialogue De Pythiae oraculis (Babbitt's Loeb translation, 1936); Cicero's De Divinatione (Loeb edition, 1923); the unsigned "Haruspices" article in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1875); the Yale Cuneiform Commentaries Project for the Mesopotamian extispicy series Bārûtu; and the NYU ISAW account of Late Shang oracle bones. The psychotherapist-side framework and procedures are synthesis built on these, marked [synthesis].

This guide covers a family of practices, not a therapy: consulting a god's oracle (Delphi, Dodona) and reading omens. These included haruspicy and extispicy (reading the entrails of sacrificed animals), Roman augury (reading signs such as birds), and Shang Chinese scapulimancy and plastromancy (inscribed bones and shells). As institutions they are extinct. They matter to a psychotherapist for three reasons. They are an early, well-documented record of how people brought illness, children, marriage, work and travel to an outside authority when the future was uncertain. Their ideas and revivals survive in modern divination, which some clients use. And the oldest surviving critique of them, Cicero's, is itself an argument about how people cope with uncertainty. [source: Eidinow 2020; Kachuck, BMCR 2008.01.14; Smith 1875; Cicero, Div. II]

The "core idea of change" belonged to the practitioners, not to modern psychology. In their terms, a god's will or a sign written into nature could be read, and acting on that reading set a person right with the gods or chose the better course. Eidinow reads the Dodona questions differently: consultation helped ordinary men and women reflect on uncertainty and learn to live with it, more than it handed decisions over. The BMCR review summarises her book as saying people often used oracles to confirm choices already made, "setting risk aside". [source: Eidinow 2020; Kachuck, BMCR 2008.01.14] Nothing in this guide teaches any divination method. The psychotherapist's work is historical literacy, assessment, and working with clients who are drawn to divination, rely on it, or have been exploited through it. [synthesis]

2. Framework

2a. The historical practices in outline

Mesopotamia (extispicy). The great extispicy series Bārûtu catalogued conditional "If…" omens from features of a sacrificed animal's liver, and later scholars wrote commentaries on it. One such commentary, now in the Ashmolean Museum, dates from the Achaemenid period (5th century to 331 BCE). [source: Yale CCP P348955] An Old Babylonian clay model of a sheep's liver, divided into annotated sections, was probably used to teach apprentices. Omens were taken before a king travelled or went to war. [source: COJS, Clay Model of a Sheep's Liver] Healing in Mesopotamia was the work of distinct but overlapping professions (asûtu, medicine; āšipūtu, exorcism). A diagnostic omen series (Sakikkû) sat alongside the divination literature. [source: Zomer, BMCR 2020.02.13, reviewing Steinert 2018] Egyptian oracle practice is not covered by the sources used here [uncertain: not verified].
Shang China (oracle bones), c. 1250–1050 BCE. Late Shang elites carried out ritual divinations, and the inscriptions survive. Some concern health: one series for King Wu Ding sought to identify which ancestor was causing his "sick tooth", so that a sacrifice could appease that ancestor. Skeletal remains from Yinxu show dental disease of the kind that would explain it. [source: ISAW Newsletter 23, 2019]
Greece (Dodona, Delphi). Dodona was the oracle of Zeus and Dione in north-west Greece. Over 4,000 inquiries survive, written on lead tablets dating from the late 6th to the mid-3rd century BC, and most are held at the Archaeological Museum of Ioannina. Most askers were private individuals, men and women. They asked about health, children, marriage, work, travel, property and suspected wrongs. Questions were usually yes/no or "either x or y". The commonest open question was which god to sacrifice to, asked most often about health, disease and children. [source: Eidinow 2020; Kachuck, BMCR 2008.01.14; Archaeology Wiki 2018] At Delphi, Plutarch discussed why the Pythia (the priestess who spoke the god's answers) no longer answered in verse, arguing that his own age preferred plain speech. [source: Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis, Babbitt 1936] The decline and end of the Greek oracles is outside the sources used here [uncertain: not verified].
Rome (haruspicy and augury). Haruspices interpreted entrails and portents such as lightning and earthquakes. The art came from Etruria, and tradition credited the Etruscan Tages with founding it. The senate and private people consulted them, but under the republic they were not a priestly college. Under the emperors a college of sixty existed, and Claudius attempted a revival whose outcome is unknown. [source: Smith 1875] Augury was the official reading of signs. Cicero argued that by his day it was a formality, kept for reasons of state. [source: Cicero, Div. II.70–83] The Piacenza bronze liver is often cited as an Etruscan teaching model [uncertain: not verified].
The ancient critique. In De Divinatione Book II, Cicero argues that the schools of entrail-readers disagreed on method. He sees no natural link between marks on a liver and a person's fortunes, holds that portents have natural causes (§60), and argues that foreknowing unavoidable disaster would only bring misery (§§21–23). He sums divination up as "a little error, a little superstition, and a good deal of fraud" (§83), and recalls Cato's quip about a soothsayer meeting another soothsayer and not laughing (§52). [source: Cicero, Div. II, Loeb 1923]

2b. What survives and how it reaches clients

The institutions are extinct. What survives is: popular divination (astrology, tarot, palm reading, psychic consultations, offered in shops, by phone and online); religious and reconstructionist revivals that draw on ancient oracles; heritage tourism to Delphi and Dodona; and the habit of looking outside oneself for certainty before a hard decision. A client might meet this through an interest in history or classics, a family tradition, a revival community, or a commercial reader. Modern divination is covered by the divination guides in Domain XIV, and spiritual healing offered in place of treatment by Domain XII. Commercial fortune-telling can be a route to financial exploitation. In 2025 NBC reported a man working at a psychic and astrology shop in Hicksville, New York, charged (not convicted) with taking $20,000 from a 68-year-old woman who paid to "purchase the power to fight evil spirits". The report added that fortune telling is illegal in New York. [source: NBC, 18 July 2025] [synthesis for the survey; sources as tagged]

2c. Phases of the psychotherapist's work [synthesis]

Recognition and assessment. Learn what divination means to the client: interest, faith, heritage, habit or dependence. Ask about spending, health decisions and safety. Move on when the function of the practice and any risks are clear.
Safety and safeguarding. Deal first with financial exploitation, health care delayed or replaced, threats or "curse" fear, and suicidality after a dire prediction. Move on when immediate risks are contained or referred.
Formulation and core work. Work on tolerating uncertainty, owning decisions, reassurance-seeking, and the meaning, grief or guilt bound up with omens. Where the client values it, use history as a mirror. Move on when the client can make and own decisions without needing certainty first.
Integration, repair and follow-up. Respect any faith or heritage the client keeps. Repair family conflict or harm from exploitation. Plan relapse prevention for high-stakes decisions in future.

Format is ordinary individual therapy; the number and length of sessions follow the client's presenting problem. [synthesis]

3. Guiding principles

Historical accuracy, attributed. Describe ancient practice only as historians and translated texts describe it, and say who says it. In practice: tell a client "historians of Dodona report…", not "the ancients believed…". [synthesis; source: Eidinow 2020]
No instruction in divination. The therapist never teaches, performs, interprets or recommends a divination method, ancient or modern. In practice: if asked to "read" a sign or card, decline and explore what the client hopes it would settle. [synthesis]
Respect for belief, without judging its truth. For many people divination is part of religion or culture. In practice: assess its function and its costs. Do not debate whether it works, and do not mock it. [synthesis; source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8 (Unbound Medicine), religious or spiritual problem listed under Includes]
Function over form. The same practice can be meaning-making, community, comfort, avoidance or compulsion. In practice: ask what it does for the client, how often, and what happens when it is not available. [synthesis]
Uncertainty is the target, not belief. Fear of the unknown is described as a core transdiagnostic construct. [source: Carleton 2016] In practice: work on the client's relationship with not knowing, whatever they believe.
The client's agency. The Dodona questions were framed as "Will it be better if…?", which keeps choice with the asker. [source: Eidinow 2020] In practice: help the client name their own options and values, and do not take the oracle's role yourself. [synthesis]
Health questions go to health care. Ancient people asked oracles and omens about illness (the Shang king's toothache; Dodona health questions). No divination is a diagnosis or treatment. In practice: when divination is guiding health choices, route the client to medical care. Never advise on starting, stopping or changing a medicine. [synthesis; source: ISAW 2019; Kachuck 2008]
Safeguarding before exploration. Escalating payments, curse-removal offers and isolation from family are signs of possible exploitation. In practice: screen for them early and act through adult-protection and police routes. [synthesis; source: NBC 2025]
Clear roles. The therapist does not also act as the client's reader, spiritual adviser or business contact. In practice: see APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05 (Multiple Relationships) at https://www.apa.org/ethics/code. Other ethics points here are [synthesis].
Even-handed, non-moralising language. In practice: use "divination", "oracle", "reader" and "practitioner". Avoid loaded labels for groups or for the client. [synthesis]

4. Intervention inventory

The interventions below are the psychotherapist's own work; steps not drawn from a cited source are marked [synthesis]. None is a step of any divination practice.

4.1 Building the clinician's own historical literacy

Purpose / when: Before working with a client who raises ancient oracles, omens or their revivals, so the clinician neither romanticises nor dismisses them. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Read one historian's account and one primary text in a public-domain translation (for example, Eidinow on Dodona; Cicero, De Divinatione II). (2) Note what is documented (who asked, about what, in what form) and what is uncertain. (3) Keep a short list of attributed facts you can use with clients (the Dodona question forms; the Shang toothache series; Cicero's critique). (4) Check any claim a client brings against a historian's account before you agree with or correct it.
Example language (illustrative): "From what historians have found at Dodona, most people asking were ordinary men and women with very ordinary worries."
Watch for: stating popular myths as fact. Signs it is working: you can attribute each historical point you make, and you can say "historians aren't sure" where they aren't.

4.2 Curious opening assessment of a client's interest in divination

Purpose / when: When a client mentions oracles, omens, readings, horoscopes or ancient divination. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Ask open questions about what they use, since when, and how they came to it (history, faith, family, a reader, online). (2) Ask what it gives them, and what decisions it has influenced. (3) Ask about cost in money, time and relationships. (4) Ask how they feel when a reading is bad or a reading isn't possible. (5) Summarise without evaluating whether it is true.
Example language (illustrative): "Tell me about the readings. What do you usually bring to them, and how do you feel afterwards?"
Watch for: the client guarding against expected ridicule. Signs it is working: the client describes frequency, spending and feelings openly.

4.3 Cultural and spiritual formulation

Purpose / when: When divination is part of the client's religion, heritage or community. Use it to understand the practice in its own frame and to separate cultural norm from distress. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Use the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview with its supplementary module on spirituality, religion and moral traditions [uncertain: not verified]. (2) Ask how others in the client's tradition see the practice and its limits. (3) Where the difficulty centres on religious or spiritual experience, consider recording it as a religious or spiritual problem (ICD-10-CM Z65.8, "Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances", which lists religious or spiritual problem under Includes). (4) Practise cultural humility and the spiritual and religious competencies set out by Vieten et al. (2013) [uncertain: not verified].
Example language (illustrative): "In your family's tradition, who usually consults signs, and what would people there say is a healthy way to use them?"
Watch for: pathologising a culturally normal practice, or ignoring real distress because it is "cultural". Signs it is working: the client feels understood, and the problem is stated in their own terms.

4.4 Functional analysis of divination use

Purpose / when: When use seems frequent, costly or tied to distress. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Pick recent episodes and map trigger, feeling, the consultation itself, short-term relief and longer-term cost. (2) Identify the function: certainty, reassurance, permission, avoiding blame, belonging, meaning, or comfort in grief. (3) Rate how much the client feels they can choose not to consult. (4) Agree a shared formulation.
Example language (illustrative): "It sounds like the reading takes the edge off the worry for a day or two, and then the next question comes. Does that fit?"
Watch for: a pattern of escalating frequency or spending, which points towards 4.9 and 4.11. Signs it is working: the client can predict when the urge to consult will arise.

4.5 Assessing decision anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty

Purpose / when: When the client consults signs mainly to escape not knowing. Carleton (2016) describes fear of the unknown as a core transdiagnostic construct, related to intolerance of uncertainty. [source: Carleton 2016]
Steps: (1) Ask how the client copes with open-ended situations: health results, relationships, jobs. (2) Screen for generalised worry, panic, obsessive-compulsive symptoms and depression with your usual validated measures (licensed instruments used as licensed, items not reproduced). (3) Link the findings to the functional analysis. (4) Choose an evidence-based treatment for any disorder you identify. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "If you couldn't know how this will turn out, what would be the hardest part of that for you?"
Watch for: treating the divination as the problem when an anxiety disorder underlies it. Signs it is working: you have a clear clinical formulation beyond "uses readings".

4.6 Psychoeducation using history as a mirror

Purpose / when: For clients interested in history, or ashamed of how much they worry, show that uncertainty about health, children, love and work is age-old. [source: Eidinow 2020; Archaeology Wiki 2018] [synthesis for the use]
Steps: (1) Ask permission to share a historical example. (2) Describe, attributed, the topics of the Dodona questions (marriage, children, health, work, travel). (3) Link to the client: the worry is human, and the question is how to live with it. (4) Ask what they make of it.
Example language (illustrative): "Historians of the oracle at Dodona say thousands of people wrote down questions like 'Will it be better if I move?' Your question is a very old one."
Watch for: the history being heard as endorsing or mocking divination. Keep it to normalising the worry. Signs it is working: the client is less ashamed and more curious about their own pattern.

4.7 Recovering the client's own options and values

Purpose / when: When the client wants a sign to tell them what to do. The Dodona form "Will it be better if…?" already names options, which can be turned into the client's own decision work. [source: Eidinow 2020] [synthesis for the procedure]
Steps: (1) Ask the client to write the question they would put to an oracle. (2) Pull out the options it contains. (3) For each option, explore values, likely outcomes, what is unknown and what can be found out. (4) Ask what they would choose if no sign were available. (5) Agree a small, reversible step where one exists.
Example language (illustrative): "Your question already has two paths in it. Let's look at what each one means to you, without waiting for anything outside to settle it."
Watch for: the therapist being cast as the new oracle (see 4.15). Signs it is working: the client states a choice and their reasons in their own words.

4.8 Building tolerance of uncertainty

Purpose / when: When fear of the unknown drives the consulting. [source: Carleton 2016 for the construct; synthesis for the procedure]
Steps: (1) Explain the cycle: uncertainty, then distress, then seeking certainty, then short relief, then more sensitivity to uncertainty. (2) Agree, collaboratively and with consent, small experiments in acting before certainty is reached, starting with low-stakes choices. (3) Have the client predict the feared outcome and record what actually happens. (4) Review, and then increase the stakes gradually. Use an established CBT protocol for any diagnosed disorder.
Example language (illustrative): "This week, could you pick one small decision and make it without checking first, then notice what actually happens?"
Watch for: experiments that are too large, or that remove a valued religious practice without the client's choice. Signs it is working: distress about not knowing falls, and decisions get made.

4.9 Recognising compulsive or reassurance-driven consultation

Purpose / when: When consultations are frequent, repetitive, hard to resist, or focused on feared harm. This may reflect obsessive-compulsive or health-anxiety patterns. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Ask about frequency, repeating the same question, and distress when prevented. (2) Screen for OCD and health anxiety. (3) If present, formulate the consulting as reassurance-seeking within that disorder and refer to, or provide, evidence-based treatment. (4) Agree with the client how to reduce reassurance-seeking, without the therapist offering reassurance in its place.
Example language (illustrative): "When you've asked the same question three times this week, does the answer settle it, or does the doubt come back?"
Watch for: the therapist's own reassurance replacing the reading. Signs it is working: fewer repeated consultations, and less distress between them.

4.10 Routing health questions to medical care

Purpose / when: When a client is using signs, readings or a revival practice to decide about symptoms, diagnosis or treatment. Ancient people did the same: the Shang king's toothache was attributed to an ancestor, and Dodona askers brought illness to the god. [source: ISAW 2019; Kachuck 2008] [synthesis for the procedure]
Steps: (1) Ask directly whether any health decision is waiting on a reading. (2) If care is being delayed or replaced, say clearly and kindly that divination is not diagnosis or treatment, and encourage medical assessment. (3) Offer practical help (an appointment, a list of questions for the doctor). (4) Never advise on starting, stopping or changing a medicine; refer those questions to the prescriber. (5) Where there is urgent physical risk, follow your service's emergency procedure.
Example language (illustrative): "Whatever the reading says, I'd like you to have a doctor look at this. Could we work out together how to get an appointment this week?"
Watch for: symptoms being explained as spiritual or ancestral causes in a way that delays care. Signs it is working: the client attends medical care while keeping their beliefs.

4.11 Screening for financial exploitation and safeguarding

Purpose / when: When a client pays a reader, especially if payments are escalating, the reader claims a curse or evil spirits, or the client is older, isolated or bereaved. Major news has reported, for example, a fortune-teller charged (not convicted) in 2025 with taking $20,000 from a 68-year-old woman who paid to "fight evil spirits". In that case a bank employee called police when a further payment was attempted. [source: NBC 2025] [synthesis for the procedure]
Steps: (1) Ask about total spending, requests for large sums, secrecy, warnings not to tell family, and claims of curses or danger. (2) Assess capacity and vulnerability. (3) Where you suspect fraud or coercion, explain the options: stop payments, contact the bank, report to police, and use consumer-protection and adult-protection routes as they apply locally. (4) Follow your mandatory reporting duties for vulnerable adults and any children involved. (5) Document carefully and consult.
Example language (illustrative): "When someone says only paying them can lift a curse, that's a pattern people often regret later. Would you like to look at what you've paid so far and what your options are?"
Watch for: shame stopping disclosure, and fear that refusing the reader will bring harm. Signs it is working: payments stop and the client links up with protective support.

4.12 Working with clients in heritage or revival communities

Purpose / when: When a client belongs to a religious or reconstructionist community that revives ancient oracular or omen practices, or a family tradition of divination. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Ask about the practice's place in their community and its meaning to them. (2) Separate the community's own norms from the client's distress or difficulty. (3) Support the client's own choices about participating. (4) Watch for coercion, financial pressure or isolation, and respond as in 4.11 if present.
Example language (illustrative): "I'm not here to judge your practice. I'd like to understand how it fits with what's been troubling you."
Watch for: the therapist's own views on religion leaking into the work. Signs it is working: the client feels able to talk about doubts as well as commitment.

4.13 Distinguishing belief from psychotic or dissociative experience

Purpose / when: When a client reports receiving personal signs or messages, or feels compelled or controlled by omens. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Ask whether others in their tradition would share the interpretation. (2) Look for fixed, idiosyncratic beliefs; hallucinations; functional decline; or risk. (3) Use cultural formulation (4.3) to avoid mistaking normal belief for pathology. (4) Refer for psychiatric assessment where psychosis or mania is suspected, and coordinate care. (5) Assess risk to self and others.
Example language (illustrative): "When you see these signs, do they feel like the kind of thing others in your community would recognise, or more like something meant only for you?"
Watch for: over- or under-pathologising. Signs it is working: you have a clear differential and a shared plan.

4.14 Responding to distress after a dire prediction

Purpose / when: When a reading or omen has predicted death, illness, disaster or failure, and the client is frightened, hopeless or stuck. Cicero argued that foreknowing unavoidable harm would only bring misery. [source: Cicero, Div. II.21–23] [synthesis for the procedure]
Steps: (1) Assess safety, including suicidal thinking, following safe-messaging practice. (2) Validate the fear without confirming the prediction. (3) Explore what the prediction means to the client and what they fear most. (4) Work on the uncertainty, as in 4.8, and on what the client can still influence. (5) If there is suicide risk, follow standard risk assessment and safety planning, and give crisis resources: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (US), Samaritans 116 123 (UK and Ireland).
Example language (illustrative): "That reading has frightened you badly. Let's look at what you're afraid of, and what's actually in your hands."
Watch for: hopelessness, giving up on medical care, or self-harm. Signs it is working: fear eases, and the client takes up ordinary planning again.

4.15 Managing the "therapist as oracle" dynamic

Purpose / when: When the client asks the therapist to tell them what will happen, or what they must do. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Notice the request and name it gently. (2) Explore what an answer from outside would relieve. (3) Return the decision to the client, using 4.7. (4) Reflect in supervision on any pull to give advice or reassurance.
Example language (illustrative): "I notice part of you would like me to give you the answer. I can't see the future, but I can help you think through what you want."
Watch for: giving advice to relieve your own discomfort. Signs it is working: the client tolerates the therapist not knowing.

4.16 Working with guilt and blame tied to omens

Purpose / when: When a client blames themself, an ancestor or a spirit for an illness or a loss, or regrets not "heeding a sign". The Shang divinations sought the ancestor causing an illness, and the commonest open Dodona question was which god to sacrifice to. [source: ISAW 2019; Kachuck 2008] [synthesis for the procedure]
Steps: (1) Explore the attribution and the feelings it carries. (2) Respect its religious meaning. (3) Gently separate responsibility from the client's wish for control. (4) Support grief work, with meaning-making that fits the client's tradition, and with clergy or community support where the client wants it.
Example language (illustrative): "It sounds like believing you missed a sign is easier, in a way, than believing nobody could have known. Is that close?"
Watch for: complicated grief or depression, which need their own treatment. Signs it is working: self-blame softens.

4.17 Family and intergenerational conflict over divination

Purpose / when: When family members disagree about consulting readers or traditional diviners, or a family history includes reliance on divination. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Map each person's view and fear. (2) Help the family name shared goals (safety, health, respect). (3) Agree limits on spending or health decisions where these cause harm. (4) Refer to family therapy where needed.
Example language (illustrative): "Your mother sees the readings as protecting the family, and you see them as costing it. Can we start with what you both want to protect?"
Watch for: the client being caught in the middle, and elder financial abuse. Signs it is working: the conflict is calmer and agreements hold.

4.18 When a colleague or institution brings divination into therapy

Purpose / when: When a colleague offers readings, omen interpretation or oracle work as treatment, charges clients for it, or combines it with therapy. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Do not take part in, supervise or refer to such a service. (2) Raise concerns directly where it is safe to, and consult an ethics lead or supervisor. (3) Consider multiple-relationship concerns (APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05, https://www.apa.org/ethics/code). (4) Where clients may be harmed or exploited, report through your licensing board or professional body's published complaint route. (5) Support any affected clients.
Example language (illustrative, to a colleague): "I'm concerned that offering readings in sessions mixes roles in a way clients may not be able to consent to. Can we talk with the clinical lead?"
Watch for: the client's welfare getting lost in a dispute between colleagues. Signs it is working: the practice stops, and affected clients get support.

4.19 Referral and signposting

Purpose / when: At any point where needs exceed the current therapy. [synthesis]
Steps: (1) Refer medical questions to a doctor (4.10). (2) Refer fraud to the bank, police, and adult-protection services (4.11). (3) Refer possible psychosis or mania to psychiatry (4.13). (4) Refer suicide risk to crisis services (4.14). (5) Point to religious or community leaders, where the client wants that. (6) Point historically interested clients to reliable histories and museums rather than commercial readers.
Example language (illustrative): "This is something a doctor needs to look at, and I'd like to help you get there."
Watch for: referrals that feel like rejection. Signs it is working: the client takes up the referral and the therapy continues.

5. Handling problems

None of the historical sources address therapy. All guidance in this section is [synthesis] unless a source is tagged.

The client wants the therapist to endorse, or to disprove, divination. Decline both. Say your role is to help with what the client is struggling with, not to rule on beliefs. Move to function (4.4) and uncertainty (4.8). If the client is a historian or classicist, attributed history (4.6) can meet them without the therapist taking sides. Cicero's critique may interest some clients, but offer it only as history and only if they ask, never as a correction. [source: Cicero, Div. II]
Stuck: "I can't decide until I get a sign." Name the stuckness. Shrink the decision to a small, reversible step. Ask what they would advise a friend. Use the Dodona "better if…" framing to bring out the options already present. [source: Eidinow 2020 for the framing]
Resistance after a perceived slight to faith or heritage. Treat it as a rupture. Acknowledge it, apologise for any dismissiveness, restate respect, and ask what would help the client feel safe to continue. Revisit the cultural formulation (4.3).
Overwhelm after a frightening reading or omen. Ground the client first, then assess risk (4.14). Give crisis resources where needed: 988 (US), Samaritans 116 123 (UK and Ireland). Postpone formulation until the client is settled.
Non-adherence to uncertainty experiments. Check that the steps were small enough and freely chosen. Explore what the client feared. Do not frame skipping a planned experiment as failure. Never require the client to give up a religious practice.
Escalating spending or secrecy. Prioritise safeguarding (4.11). Involve trusted others, with consent, or as your duty requires. If the client refuses help and has capacity, document the conversation, keep the door open, and keep reviewing the risk.
The client returns to a reader between sessions and brings new predictions. Use it as data. Ask what prompted the visit and what the reading relieved, and fold it into the functional analysis. Avoid a power struggle.
Health care being delayed in favour of readings or a revival ritual. Be direct and kind (4.10). Do not threaten to end therapy. Coordinate with medical providers with consent, and use emergency routes where there is immediate risk.
A family member (often an older parent) is being exploited. Help the client use adult-protection, bank and police routes (4.11, 4.17). Hold the client's guilt and anger.
Therapist discomfort or fascination. Some therapists are drawn to the romance of ancient oracles, or uneasy with divination in general. Take it to supervision. Keep to attributed history and the client's goals.
Possible psychosis presented as "omens". Do not argue with the content. Assess, involve psychiatry, and keep contact (4.13).
Client wants instruction in an ancient method "for history's sake". Decline to teach any method. Point them to histories and museum collections. Explore what learning it would mean to them.
A colleague integrates readings into therapy. Follow 4.18. Do not ignore it because "it's harmless". The concern is roles, consent, money and delayed care.

Sources

Web sources:

Works cited:

Eidinow, E. (2007). Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks. Oxford University Press.
Steinert, U. (ed.) (2018). Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues: Medicine, Magic and Divination. De Gruyter.
Vieten, C., et al. (2013). Spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists [uncertain: not verified].
APA, Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, https://www.apa.org/ethics/code (Standard 3.05).
ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances (includes 'Religious or spiritual problem'), https://www.unboundmedicine.com/icd/view/ICD-10-CM/945432/all/Z65_8___Other_specified_problems_related_to_psychosocial_circumstances

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