As an example of how much divination, sign interpretation and spiritual guidance are deeply rooted in human culture and history, one can look at the Australian aboriginal culture. Similar to the native American historical cultures and nations, they are diverse enough to not be able to lump them up together simplistically in one easy to characterize group, but still it seems possible to talk about characteristics of these cultures that have a significant amount in common with each other, especially when compared to the modern civilization.
From what I could gather, one common feature of the Australian aboriginal divination practices is their rootedness in nature, inner and outer. From descriptions of their cultural tradition comes up the notion of reading into the signs in the environment without, as well as into the inner landscape within. These are not casual practices that everyone could perform, these are considered serious and sacred rituals, and like in many other cultures this kind of activity is the domain of specific types of people, called today generally shamans or elders.
The inner landscape part of the Australian aboriginal divination practices is based on the interpretation of dreams, very much in the purpose of spiritual guidance and possible predicting into future events, both for individual destinies and for community challenges. As said, not everyone could perform them, and they are considered sacred and as a communication from ancestors. this can be called as reading into the signs in nature, in this case the inner human nature, so to speak.
The outer landscape part has to do with specific predictive reading into the signs that come from natural phenomena, like animal behaviors, cloud formations, wind patterns, landscape changes, etc. Just like the inner landscape readings, these also require deep knowledge in the said landscape and strong spiritual connection. And just like the inner landscape readings, the domain of their focus was both individual and collective. It’s focused in spiritual and social domains, like potential community conflicts, or spiritual disruptions or opportunities. This in addition to the more mundane issues of hunting success, weather forecasting and tracking animal migration, identifying safe travel routs and agricultural and food gathering issues.
In light of these practices of extrapolating from inner experiences to the world around, and visa versa from the natural world around to the personal spiritual experience, it can be readily applied here the well known central hermetic principle of “as above so below, as within so without”. It’s a foundational axiom in the modern practices of astrology and tarot and the like, that points to the correlation between inner and outer worlds. This correlation is the basis for the spiritual guidance and divination practices around the world today, just like it has been for thousands of years in various cultures, and the Australian aboriginal culture is known to go back tens of thousands of years, the span of the “Dream time”.