Friday, October 2, 2009

Destiny vs. Fate:

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.

(I didn't write this one)