diviner

In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Slate’s judicial diviner Mark Joseph Stern joins to talk about a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on abortion that really took both text and history and human rights seriously.

When these young sweethearts consult a local water diviner, she warns them to stay far away from the slightly hysterical Mrs. Knowles and enigmatic Mr. Miller, both obsessed with a local legend about King John: His lost treasure supposedly lies sunken in the river’s mud but somehow guarded from discovery.

A descendant of Lieutenant Columbo, Hercule Poirot and Edgar Allan Poe’s genre-creating C. Auguste Dupin, Blanc is both a diviner of hidden meanings and a master of the obvious, the soul of discretion and a hogger of the spotlight.

Long and staff-like, a “diviner’s tool” used in Yoruba culture to advise individuals on what paths to take in the future, marks the beginning of the exhibition.

There is also Augure, a diviner who can sense the future, and from the start the omens look forbidding for the newlyweds.