Category: Folklore

Month of Blogging Challenge: Z is for Zygomancy

3/5/2015

(Y was late, so Z is late.)

I originally had a long post on the Zodiac, which I somehow managed to delete, so for Z I have Zygomancy. This is divination by weights.

Wikipedia lists it but doesn't have a corresponding article. According to occultopedia.com it involves suspended weights, or weight comparison, and was practiced by the Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Persians.

In general the practice seems to have been based on whether an object was easy or difficult to lift, or whether it was perceived to be light or heavy. Pendulum dowsing also falls into this category.

The best example of Zygomancy I can think of is the witch trial in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Month of Blogging Challenge: Y is for Ydromancy

3/5/2015

(Several days late as we decided to go and see Avengers: Age of Ultron, and I didn't have anything queued up.)

Also known as scrying, specifically by water (which, unsurprisingly, is also called hydromancy). According to Wikipedia this can include the study of the ripples produced by pebbles dropped in a pool, along with some other more complicated methods involving drops of oil, rings shaken in bottles, or speaking words over a glass of water and studying its "spontaneous ebullience".

Hydromancy was apparently forbidden in Renaissance magic, along with geomancy, palmistry, divination by fire or weather, divination by bones - specifically shoulder blades (scapulimancy), and necromancy. It's not clear if divination by other parts of the body was acceptable, or why shoulder blades were so offensive. Demonology was also banned.

Month of Blogging Challenge: X is for Xenomancy

28/4/2015

Also known as xenomantia or xenomancie, so I'm good for X this time around.

According to Occultopedia.com this is the art of divination by studying the actions of the first stranger or strangers you meet. As such it falls into the general category of omens. The name is derived from the Greek xenos (stranger) and manteia (divination).

In general it was the physical actions that were studied, although it was apparently considered bad luck in Ancient Greece to encounter a priest riding a donkey.

Month of Blogging Challenge: W is for Wax

27/4/2015

Anyone who's ever been a teenage girl has probably tried this one: drip wax from a lit candle into a bowl of water and, like reading tea-leaves, see what shapes you get. These are open to interpretation - a ring for marriage, a plane for travel, etc. As with tea leaves, it's quite difficult to figure out what a blob is supposed to be although I suppose what's good for one works for the other. Here's a method.

Another method of wax divination is to watch the way it drips down the candle: ask a question, if it drips mostly down the right the answer is yes, if left no, and if both then no answer is possible.

Wax isn't the only way to divine with candles. There's also the less messy method of meditating on the flame, or its reflection. If you decide to give candle divination a try, make sure to do so safely.

Month of Blogging Challenge: V is for Vampire Tarot

25/4/2015

This one's a bit of a cheat, because I already had tea leaves for T and needed something for V.

The Vampire Tarot is a tarot deck by Robert M. Place that tells the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula. As far as I can tell, it's read like any other tarot deck. Standard tarot decks have four suits, like playing cards but with four "face cards" (with a knight as well as the jack/knave, king, and queen). They also have a set of "trumps" which are the named cards like the Tower and Death, all of which have their own meaning. The deck features Edgar Allen Poe as the Knight of Stakes, and Jonathan Harker as The Fool.

Bonus wacky V - videomancy, which Wikipedia describes as divination by video however doesn't provide an article to describe how that actually works. They do helpfully provide a links to the articles on both film and video though, in case you don't know what those are.

Month of Blogging Challenge: U is for Urimancy

24/4/2015

While researching for these blog posts, I came to the conclusion that human beings will use pretty much anything to try to make sense of the world, and this confirmed it. As the name suggests, this is divination using urine. According to occultopedia.com it was practiced as far back as ancient Rome, where the practice was to look for bubbles. Other methods included examining colour, smell, flow patterns, and even taste.

Occultopedia suggests that urimancy was used by 16th and 17th century witchfinders, who apparently saw no irony in using occult practices to find witches. Iron objects were put in a bottle filled with the urine of the accused. If the corked popped out of the bottle, or the person became ill, they were guilty.

Another distasteful U is umbilicomancy, which is apparently divination by umbilical cord.

Month of Blogging Challenge: T is for Tea

23/4/2015

Tasseomancy, otherwise known as reading tea leaves. According to The Complete Book of Fortune, the method is to use a tea with well-defined leaves, rather than a dusty blend as this produces a sludgy blob. Use the tea loose, and drink until about a teaspoon of tea is left. Hold the cup in the left hand and turn three times anti-clockwise while thinking of the question you want answered. Slowly invert the cup on the saucer and leave a minute or so for the liquid to drain away.

Turn the cup back over and interpret the pictures made by the leaves.

Steve Roud, in A Pocket Guide to Superstitions of the British Isles, says that this methd of divination has been popular for around 300 years, with the first recorded references to it being made around the late 1720s. The earliest three references are between 1726 and 1731: he believes that this closeness indicates it was fashionable and new at the time. Many early references refer to coffee grounds, before tea overtook them in popularity.

Month of Blogging Challenge: S is for Sieve and Shears

22/4/2015

This is described in Steve Roud's Superstitions of the British Isles as a complicated method of discovering thieves and lost items. It is recorded in use in Britain from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

The method was that the shears were stuck in the rim of a sieve, and supported by two people on their fingers. They would then ask the apostles Peter and Paul if certain people had taken the missing object, and the sieve would turn around at the nomination of the guilty party.

Although the earliest description in Britain was Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584, the general method is recorded as far back as Ancient Greece, and is referred to by the poet Theocritus in his Idylls.

Month of Blogging Challenge: R is for Rhapsodomancy

21/4/2015

This is divination by poetry, sort of a more literary version of Bible-dipping. This can be done by opening a book randomly and choosing a verse at first sight, another method is to write several verse or lines on pieces of paper, then choose one at random from a container.

According to Wikipedia this is an ancient method of divination used at least as far back as Ancient Rome, where the name of the particular method depended on the poet uses, eg Praenestinae sortes Virgilanae for Virgil.

The sibylline books were used for this by 6th Century Greek Oracles. They weren't actually books, rather loose leaves that could be shuffled and drawn at random, and were burned in 83BC. A replica collection was also destroyed, in AD 405. The prophecies of the Greek Oracles were famously vague.

The practice became generally known as bibliomancy when people started using the Bible as their text of choice, a term which now applies generally to the use of books. The earliest recorded instance of Bible use is 1693, although the Wikipedia article doesn't give any details of the circumstances.

Month of Blogging Challenge: Q is for Qabalah

20/4/2015

This is, as you might expect, an alternative spelling of Kabbalah, and literally the only entry for Q on Wikipedia's extensive list of divination methods. It's an esoteric school of thought that originated in Judaism.

According to Wikipedia, the definition "varies according to the traditions and aims of those following it", which makes it difficult to cover in a single blog post. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a practice which originates in a living religion, there are many different traditions. From the Renaissance onwards Jewish Kabbalah was studied by non-Jews, which led to the absorption and adoptions of the ideas found there. The main article splits off into separate Kabbalistic traditions, including Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabalah, two of the resulting practices which developed independently of the source.

Wikipedia also states that it was through these non-Jewish associations that Kabbalah became linked with occult practices that were forbidden in Judaism itself - apart from to an elite few through the method of theurgic Practical Kabbalah.

The entry for Practical Kabbalah states that it's the appeal to an occult power other than God which is unacceptable to Judaism - however there is no such restriction on understanding the past, "or coming to a greater understanding of present and future situations", possibly through dreams.

Christian Cabala declined during the Enlightment, and the article doesn't contain any mention of divination at all. The entry for Hermetic Qabalah suggests that this flourished in the Western mystery tradition (although a citation is needed) and became a central component of Western occult magic.

None of the articles suggest anything about the methods of divination involved in these traditions, other than dreams.

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