Destiny

Related Topics:
Destiny_-_1997 :: Destiny's_Child :: Destiny_Software

For other uses of "Fate", see Fate (disambiguation)

Destiny refers to the predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as the irresistible power or agency that determines the future, whether in general or of an individual. It is a concept based on the belief that there is a natural order to the universe.

Different concepts of destiny and fate

Destiny may be envisaged as foreordained by the Divine (for example, the Protestant concept of predestination) or by human will (for example, the American concept of the nation's Manifest Destiny).

A sense of destiny in its oldest human sense is in the soldier's fatalistic image of the "bullet that has your name on it" or the moment when your number "comes up." The human sense that there must be a hidden purpose in the random lottery governs the selection of Theseus to be among the youths to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Many Greek legends and tales teach the futility of trying to outmaneuver an inexorable fate that has been correctly predicted.

Many people believe destiny is a fixed timeline of events that is inevitable and unchangeable.

Others believe that they choose their own destiny by choosing different paths throughout their life.

Destiny in literature

Destiny is a source of irony in literature; characters may act without realizing the destiny that the audience or reader is aware of. This form of irony is important in Greek tragedy, as it is in the Schiller play that Verdi transformed into La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny") or Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, or in Macbeth's knowledge of his own destiny, which does not preclude a horrible fate. The common theme is of these works is a protagonist who cannot escape a destiny if their fate has been sealed, however hard they try.

Another notable mention is Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles. Tess is destined to the miserable death that she is confronted with at the end of the novel

Divination of destiny

In most cultures, one's destiny can only be learned about through a shaman, babalawo, prophet, sibyl or seer. In Shang dynasty China, turtle bones were thrown ages before the I Ching was codified. Arrows were tossed to read destiny, from Thrace to pagan Mecca. In Yoruba traditional religion, the Ifa oracle is consulted via a string of sixteen cowries or oil-palm nuts whose pattern when thrown on to a wooden tray represents the 256 possible combinations whose named "chapters" are recited and verses interpreted for the client by the babalawo. The Ifa Divination system was added in 2005 to UNESCO list of "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity".

Destiny is regarded by some as fate, a fixed timeline of events that is inevitable and unchangeable, and the future knowable through means of divination. This has led to an assumption of divination as fortune-telling, though the actual practice accounts for the self-determination of individual people and an unknowable future. In divination, destiny takes on a meaning different from its common usage.

Although the words are used interchangeably, fate and destiny are distinct things. Modern usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. The definition of fate has it that events are ordered or "meant to be". Fate is used in regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out, and that same finality is projected into the future to become the inevitability of events as they will work themselves out. Fate also has a morbid association with finality in the form of "fatality". Destiny, or fate, used in the past tense is "one's lot" and includes the sum of events leading up to a currently achieved outcome (e.g. "it was her destiny to be leader", "it was his fate to be executed"). Fate is an outcome determined by an outside agency acting upon a person or entity; but with destiny the entity is participating in achieving an outcome that is directly related to itself. Participation happens wilfully.

Destiny in divinatory practice has none of the negative connotations of fate. Destiny has the same root as "destination": destine, to direct something towards a given end ("she is destined to be leader"). Without a subject's wilful participation, there is no destining. Destiny cannot be forced on someone; if they are forced into circumstances then that is their fate. As an example, there was a scene in the movie Whale Rider when the whales had beached, and Paikea walked up to the largest one and gently kissed it. She had reached a state of consciousness where a message she had absorbed from the mythology of her people, that she had memorized, sang, and enacted in dance on stage, moved from her subconscious mind to conscious awareness, where she was informed by the myth of the Whale Rider. Until then, there was doubt in the mind of the audience that she would be leader; circumstances looked dim; but in that moment she knew that she was leader, and she knew her destiny. Events, as they played out, had guided her to this place and this time. Her next act was made with full awareness--it was what the leader must do; it was what the first Whale Rider had done.

"Why did the whales beach? Did they do it for her benefit? Because she called them?" That is fate: the objective events, the opportunities and the limitations placed before us, the circumstances we are bound to that are beyond our control, and sometimes even beyond our meager understanding as to how they happen, but are a part of our destiny in that they shape us. Fate is a backdrop on which we play out our destiny. "Why did she ride the whale and become leader?" That is her destiny, what she determined will be, by directly participating in what was happening. She directed circumstances towards a certain outcome, and in doing so determined future circumstances. By participating in our destiny, we shape fate.

Another notable mention is Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Tess is fated to the undesireable life any women in that century would hate to have.

Russian literature also countlessly refers to fate and existence in the universe. In Lermontov's Hero of Our Time, the protagonist, Pechorin rationalizes that he will burst into a room with a gun-weilding madman and confront him, on the assumption that the "chapter had already been written."

Other terms

The Old English equivalent of destiny was "doom", as in the Domesday Book, a census of England undertaken by the Normans in 1086. "Doom" subsequently took on the ominous connotations of the universal cataclysm at the end of time (see Doomsday, Doomsday machine).

References

Cornelius, Geoffrey, C. (1994). "The Moment of Astrology: Origins in Divination", Penguin Group, part of Arkana Contemporary Astrology series.

The word "Kismet" (alt., rarely, "Kismat") derives from the Arabic word "qismah", and entered the English language via the Turkish word "qismet" meaning either "the will\shave Allah" or "portion, lot or fate". In English, the word is synonymous with "Fate" or "Destiny".

The word Kismet is often used alongside the word "happenstance" to set up a dichotomy between those things that are fated to be, and those that happen purely through random, chance occurrences. For example, "After Bob broke his leg in an accident and met the pretty nurse that would later become his wife, he didn't know whether to thank Kismet or Happenstance. All he knew was that after many dark years, his world had become a brighter place again."

External links

Dictionary of the History of Ideas: "Fortune, Fate & Chance"
Destiny re-definied -- Edge Life Magazine
What is Destiny
Destiny and Its Correction

Philosophical terminology | Mythology | Coincidence