Thank you very much Martin and I have to thank a lot of people before I start.

First of all I would like to say thanks to Professor Lackner and Professor Halbers for

giving me the chance, the opportunity of working as a visiting fellow here at the EKGF.

I am particularly grateful as this opportunity was given to me irrespective of the fact that

I am quite an exotic figure in this context as my focus is neither on Chinese studies

nor on medieval studies.

Some of you may have wondered why I nevertheless so eagerly attend workshops and events that

seem to be quite far away from my own areas of interest but the simple fact is that from

every workshop, from every lecture and from every reading session I gain so much.

Many things I learn there are directly transferable to my field indeed and others open up new

perspectives that are of eminent relevance for my work.

So thank you very much likewise my thanks go to the entire staff of the EKGF primarily

Mrs. Petra Ham, to the research fellows and to all other visiting fellows and colleagues.

Many many thanks.

Well, the paper is on decision making by progostic disclosure and as you know normally the people

from the English speaking academia are starting with a video joke or with a captivating sketch

as I am a German I just start with a boring introduction.

Now that is the overview, the title suggests some preliminary analysis of divination in

African context namely that its main target cause is about decision making that its methodology

so to say is on disclosing something, laying open something and that this is done by applying

a projecting direction or array.

Well here is the overview of what I am going to do today.

First I want after the introduction deal with IFA and with the rootedness of IFA in traditional

Europe culture.

Then I will deal with epistemology in IFA divination.

Then say something about the transnational development of IFA divination that has to

do with the globalization of Europe culture and then a very very brief conclusion and

prospect.

Well, the subtitle again infers that there are two dimensions that may be considered

fundamental to African divination and to our understanding of it namely a specific concept

of the world and its entire structure, its set up and its particular characteristics

and a specific rationale for the formation and circulation of knowledge pre-shaping and

elaborate knowledge system.

In view of the topic of my talk we must not forget furthermore that neither the notion

of Africa nor of divination can be taken simply at face value or as given.

We cannot talk about Africa without considering the invention of Africa at least if we want

to move beyond a simplistic understanding in factual geographical or topographical terms.

And as to divination I don't think I have to expand on the problems referring to this

notion in front of this audience.

To cut a very long story short just a brief very brief remark on Africa or African.

I use this term very unspecific if not to say loose.

In as much as I refer to it as framing geocultural historical context that have been globalized

beyond their previous geographical localizations and now form part of multiply assorted localized

and partly relocalized discourses and practices.

So what is Africa or African can be traced both in its historical developments and in

its current so perpetually changing repositioning.

As to divination I make it easy for myself by not going into any circumstantial reflections

and ruminations on its semantics usage development occurrence etc.

I just take a definition that in my view reflects the state of the art in research on divination

in this domain by implicitly referencing African aspects.