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I wanted to know that through this question of mine. However, my perception of the quote was wrong there.

Anyways, are there any canon sources which can explain/infer how good was the Dark Lord in the art of Divination?

It is said to be a very difficult art to get right, as explained by Dumbledore to Harry at the end of Book - 3, and how he was impressed by Prof, Trelawney's overall second correct prediction in her career.


Related: How good was Voldemort at reading minds?

Dawny33
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    Divination, as shown in the books, seems to be a gift rather than a skill (the centaurs are a little better at the method but are still vague at best). You're either a Seer or you aren't, and there's zero in canon to suggest Tom was ever a Seer. – DavidS Feb 08 '16 at 12:54
  • @DavidS Yeah, but as it is being taught at the school, I guess people can improve their skills and master it too :) – Dawny33 Feb 08 '16 at 13:50
  • @Dawny33 Everything points to that not being the case. You're either a Seer - in which case you make prophecies without knowing you've done so - or you're not. Divination, as both a subject at Hogwarts and a "skill" in the larger Wizarding world, seems to be absolutely bogus. – Anthony Grist Feb 08 '16 at 16:00
  • Also worth considering that Divination was an optional subject from third year onwards, so there's no indication that Voldemort ever studied it at all. – Anthony Grist Feb 08 '16 at 16:18
  • Divination was added as en elective to protect prof trelawney (so she could make her home at hogwarts) after she made her first prediction. Otherwise she would have been vulnerable to voldemorte and his potential attempt to get more of the truth out of her regardless of how futile that attempt may be from our perspective. Dumbledore knew divination wasn't something one really learns, but it can't hurt to learn about it, and the fact that trelawney made a 2nd (and potentially 3rd if you believe the Grimm and Sirius to be a flawed but real prediction). It was the only way to keep her safe. – Escoce Feb 08 '16 at 16:57
  • @Escoce: That is probably not quite true, for Divination had been taught in Hogwarts before that, but Professor Dumbledore certainly says in Order of the Phoenix that he must allow both Trelawney and Firenze in Hogwarts to keep them safe. See http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/46988/4918 "Did Dumbledore create Divination position just to get the prophet (Sybil) under Hogwarts protection?" and http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/58758/4918 – b_jonas Feb 08 '16 at 17:31
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    Does anyone else take issue with a class where students are literally destined to fail? It's like "Being allergic to peanuts 101" with the final test being that you have to go into shock from eating peanuts. –  Feb 08 '16 at 18:05
  • @b_jonas it has been taught at hogwarts from time to time, but has never been a durable curriculum. – Escoce Feb 08 '16 at 19:09
  • @b_jonas Divination had been taught before, but it was definitely not taught at the time when Dumbledore went to interview Trelawney, and it is implied (at least how I read it) that it had not been taught during his time as Headmaster, partly because he was not interested in having it taught there. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 08 '16 at 20:45

3 Answers3

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True seers are very rare, and Cassandra Trelawney (great-great-grandmother of Sybill Trelawney) was one such canonnly known. Only those with gifted powers (or the so called inner-eye) can truly predict the future. So we can easily infer that non-gifted persons (particularly whose roots doesn't trace back to a gifted one) won't have the power of accurate future predictions.

And as far as we know, none of Voldemort's ancestor belonged to the seer family (because they were Slytherins and they considered them much above everyone to ever marry a common witch/wizard).

Hence even if there could not be a canon proof, we can logically deduce that Voldemort didn't have any divination skills. Still you may want to take a similar question I asked which could be more close to reality :

Could there been some “Seer” Blood in Harry Potter?

Prakhar Londhe
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Considering the fact that he relied so heavily on occlumency - he seems to have embraced another branch of that similar side of magic.

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    But that technically, doesn't rule out the possibility of his mastery in Divination, right? :) – Dawny33 Feb 09 '16 at 05:05
  • True. But I think it means he was less likely to focus on it. Voldemort was blind like that - he tried to master certain arts, and completely ignored others. Doesn't Dumbledore say that when talking about love and other ancient magics? – Thorson Hewell Feb 09 '16 at 14:45
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Divination is vague but can be learned as one can learn to interpret art with varying degrees of success. Having prophecies, exact tellings of the future later recorded at the Ministry is something that only happens to Seers which as far as we are aware is in-born and cannot be learned.

We can safely assume Voldemort was not a Seer, whether or not he knew Divination is up to guessing but I would say it's highly unlikely.

TheLethalCarrot
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