Best Ways to Use the Augury Spell

[ElenionAncalima]

I am going to be playing a Ancestor Oracle and one revelations is probably going to be Wisdom of the Ancestors, which grants you Augury as the spell once per day.

However, in all the games I have played, I don't think I have seem anyone use the divinations spells (augury, divination, commune, ect.)...so I am not really sure how best to make them useful...or if they even are useful.

What I am looking for are ways to make that ability useful (that won't make my GM want to smite me).

[jiriku]

Augury is nice in dungeons if the party can't make up its mind which way to turn at a corridor junction, or whether to go down a level before fully exploring the current level. If you think there's a monster on the other side of a door, it can be useful to get a general idea of the threat level of the encounter and the broad tactics you should use. Augury's also helpful when experimenting with unknown magic devices, right before any proposed action where you're concerned something might explode. It's pretty situational; even when I give my PCs 1/day items of augury, they usually get dropped in the bottom of the backpack and forgotten.