Quote from Laplace:
"We are so far from knowing all the powers of Nature and their various methods of action, that it would be poor philosophy to deny the existence of phenomena solely because they cannot be explained in the present state of our knowledge. Only we must examine them with an attention the more scrupulous as it seems more difficult to accept them, and it is here that the analysis of probabilities becomes indispensable to enable us to determine the extent to which we must multiply observations or experiments, so as to obtain by means of the powers which they seem to indicate a probability superior to the reasons which we may have for rejecting their existence."

The divinatory arts can be divided into two sections: Deductive or Intuitive.

The deductive divinatory arts would be astrology, physiognomony, chiromancy, and graphology.

The intuitive divinatory arts would be clairvoyance, cartomancy and oniromancy.

The deductive divinatory arts are the safer, being founded on observation, demonstrable, in one word scientific in the ordinary meaning of the word. The others require more reserve, but they have in their favor so considerable a number of proofs that we are compelled to take them into account.

Thus two points of view suggest themselves: the first is that we must look upon prophecies rather as possibilities than as certainties. The second is that we must take prophecies as being subject, after all, to free will.

The Ancients believed too much in a blind, immovable Destiny; hence their idea of FATE, although at the same time we must not forget their old saying: astra declinant, non necessitant. The stars must predispose, incline, but do not compel. And is not the hermetic commentary on Leaf VI on the Taroc, Liberty or Compulsion?

Man is faced with two roads, a choice has to be made, but the choice once made, has a chain of consequences which follows inevitably, unless, at cross-roads after cross-road, the will intervenes in order to bring back Fate into the desired road; and what gives the illusion of the inescapable is the fact that very few beings react, not without surprise, and not without lament that destiny should follow a course contrary to their desires.