Irving Finkel

So there are thousands of lines translated in many books about omens where if this happens, that will happen.

So this is how it's understood by my colleagues.

But this is absolutely impossible.

Because if you're the chief diviner for the king and you open up a sheep to take a liver out and examine it according to the queen's going to die and the king's there, you're not going to say the queen's going to die.

I mean, you're going to look like a fucking idiot if she does.

And if she does die, you're going to be responsible.

So all you can ever do and ever, ever have been able to do is to say, there's a sign here that says that the queen could die, meaning could die, not will die.

And therefore the requisite ritual or magic must immediately swing into action to defer the danger.

So the point is that A equals B is never true.

It means that with A, B could be, might be, ought to be, should be, could be true.

All those subtle things.

So that the diviner who works from the king must have been a philosopher who looks at the king.

He looks at the king and he knows what the king wants him to say.

So he has to tell the king,

What he wants to hear, he has to tell the king.

If it's bad news in such a way that he doesn't mind or he won't worry, it's the most beautiful thing.

It's so subtle.

It's like a violin concerto.

It can never have been A equals B for a minute.

So the medical texts say, if a man has this, you do this, you drink this, he'll get better.