Tag: Divination
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Rhabdomancy is a divination technique which involves the use of any rod, wand, staff, stick, arrow, or the like
One method of rhabdomancy was setting a number of staffs on end and observing where they fall, to divine the direction one should travel, or to find answers to certain questions. It has also been used for divination by arrows (which have wooden shafts) – otherwise known as belomancy. Less commonly it has been assigned to…
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Scatomancy Notes
Scatomancy—the ancient art of gazing into the abyss of the human digestive aftermath and declaring, “Behold! Your destiny lies within this steaming pile!” What could be more unhinged than plumbing the depths of poop for cosmic wisdom? Let us embark on this fecal odyssey, where divination meets digestion and prophecy smells faintly of last night’s…
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Haruspex
In the religion of ancient Rome, a haruspex (plural haruspices; also called aruspex) was a person trained to practise a form of divination called haruspicy (haruspicina), the inspection of the entrails (exta—hence also extispicy (extispicium)) of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry. The reading of omens specifically from the liver is also known by the Greek term hepatoscopy (also hepatomancy). The Roman concept is directly derived from Etruscan religion, as one of…
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Bārûtu, the “art of the diviner”
The Bārûtu, the “art of the diviner,” is a monumental ancient Mesopotamian compendium of the science of extispicy or sacrificial omens stretching over around a hundred cuneiform tablets which was assembled in the Neo-Assyrian/Babylonian period based upon earlier recensions. At the Assyrian court, the term extended to encompass sacrificial prayers and rituals, commentaries and organ models. The ikribu was the name of collections of incantations to accompany the extispicy.…
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Belomancy, also bolomancy, is the ancient art of divination by use of arrows
The word is built upon Ancient Greek: βέλος, romanized: belos, lit. ‘arrow, dart’, and μαντεία, manteia, ‘divination’. Belomancy was anciently practiced at least by Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs and Scythians. The arrows were typically marked with occult symbols and had to have feathers for every method. In one method, different possible answers to a given question were written and tied to each arrow. For example, three arrows would be marked with…
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Dowsing, doodlebugging and water witching
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia), gravesites, malign “earth vibrations” and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus. It is also known as divining (especially in water divining), doodlebugging (particularly in the United States, in searching for petroleum or treasure) or (when searching for water) water finding, or water witching (in the United States). Radiesthesia describes a…
