=The Greater Divination=.--The greater, or official, divination consists in drawing conclusions according to certain conventional rules from the cracks which appear in a deer's shoulder-blade when exposed to fire. This practice is known not only to the Chinese, Kalmucks, Cherkeses, and other races of North-Eastern Asia, but to the ancient Germans and Greeks. Nearer home we have the "reading the speal" (_épaule_), a sort of divination by examining the marks on a shoulder-blade of mutton, practised not very long ago in the Highlands of Scotland. The _Nihongi_ tells us that the Gods themselves made use of the Greater Divination in order to learn the reason of Izanagi and Izanami's abortive children the Hiruko and the Island of Ahaji. The God Koyane, ancestor of the Nakatomi, was specially charged with this form of divination. In the numerous passages of the _Nihongi_ where divination is mentioned without further description, it is no doubt the Greater Divination which is intended. Chinese methods of divination were introduced into Japan from Korea at an early date. In 553 it seems to have been an established practice that Koreans learned in medicine, in divination, and in calendar-making should take turns of service at the Court of Japan. It was no doubt owing to their influence that the tortoise-shell was substituted for the deer's shoulder-blade in this divination. A reference to the "divine Tortoise" in the _Nihongi_ under the legendary date B.C. 92 is merely an anachronism. But the tortoise was really in use for this purpose in the eighth century. The _Yengishiki_ recognizes no other, though in the country districts the shoulder-blades of deer were long retained. In an old book purporting to describe the practice of the Tsushima college of diviners at a much later period than the _Yengishiki_, we are told that the diviner, after practising religious abstinence for seven days, took his place in the divination plot (_uraba_ or _uraniha_), from which all other persons were rigorously excluded. He was provided with the tortoise-shell, some _hahaka_ wood, and other requisites. Having prayed to the God of the divination plot,[307] who is besought to grant a true divination, the diviner recites the _Kami-oroshi_ (formula which brings down the God), and kindles in a blazing fire a stick of _hahaka_ about four or five inches long, and of the thickness of a chopstick. When it has taken fire, he blows it out, and with it pricks the tortoise-shell from the back. Divination is then made from the lines thus produced. When the divination is over, the _Kami-agari_ (ascent of the God) is recited, and the ceremony is at an end.