This chapter examines colonial modes of prediction, especially astrology and popular forms of divination. While most people in New Spain believed that heavenly objects could influence conditions on earth, there was great disagreement on the relative strength and importance of such forces and whether or not humans could or should discern them. Colonial consumers of prediction understood the twin notions of free will and divine intervention and used a vernacular theology to evaluate diviners and their accuracy. As a result, by the eighteenth century, many subjects in New Spain had adopted a more critical attitude toward the information produced by astrology and divination. As colonial subjects employed these tools of tradition, often in conversation with the Inquisition and its investigations, they helped to create a new culture of knowledge that championed a more precise and empirically grounded telling of the future.

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