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Month of Blogging Challenge: O is for Oniromancy

17/4/2015

This is divination by dreams, not by using an Oraculum but by interpreting them. Although I suppose you could describe the dream books found in many households as modern versions.

The Modern Book of Fortune states a "generally held belief", that I've never heard before, that "dreams go by opposites". It doesn't really describe what this means except that, while we spend the day with our conscious mind comparing and contrasting things, the unconscious mind has no power of contrast so when we dream of black it may really be white. Which may just be an overcomplicated was of saying that dreams don't make sense, but the time I dreamed of a burning fish tank I was fully aware that the water shouldn't be on fire.

Man has been interpreting dreams since he's been having them, and many ancient civilisations believed they were divine messages. These days we tend to attribute them to physical causes (illness, stress, too much cheese before bedtime), even if there are plenty of books out there that will tell you that dreaming of your teeth falling out means the end of a friendship.

I've personally found that dreams are usually my brain trying to tell me something I'm not hearing while awake. Nothing to do with the future, but often the solution to a problem I may not even realise I'm having. If I'm anxious and I know it, I dream about being chased. If I start dreaming about toilets - specifically being unable to find one that isn't overflowing, or where the cubicle actually has a door - it means I need to take stock of what's bugging me, because something is and I'm not thinking about it.

Essentially, dreams are the subconscious talking. Sometimes it talks rubbish, sometimes it just tells a funny story, but I've found that by paying attention, it can provide an insight into waking life.

Month of Blogging Challenge: N is for Napoleon's Book of Fate

16/4/2015

This is another from The Complete Book of Fortune and one of my favourites, because it's absolutely bonkers. It was apparently found in Napoleon's effects after his defeat at Leipzig in 1813, having originally been discovered in an Egyptian royal tomb. You can handily find it here if you want to play.

First, make a random series of marks in four lines:

****
********
*******
*****

Then count up the numbers of marks (if more than 9 only count the extras), making note of which lines are odd and which even like so:

**
**
*
*

Then refer to a chart called the Oraculum, which has the star patterns across the top and a list of questions down the side. This in turn will tell you which additional chart to look at for the answer to your question. So for my pattern and the question "Shall I have success in my undertakings?" the Oraculum tells me to refer to table I. Table I tells me "Your fortune will shortly be changed into misfortune."

Thanks, Napoleon.

Month of Blogging Challenge: M is for Metoscopy

15/4/2015

This is the practice of character analysis by looking at forehead wrinkles, a kind of palmistry for the face (or facepalm, if you will). It was invented in the sixteenth century by mathematician Gerolamo Cardano. Somewhat unhelpfully, there were only seven planets when it was invented, and it doesn't appear to have been updated since Cardano died from starving himself to death to fulfil a prediction that he'd die at 75.

The Wikipedia entry for Practical Kabbalah also describes reading the face as a whole, and reading auras emanating from the face, as a form of metoscopy.

Month of Blogging Challenge: L is for Lithomancy

14/4/2015

According to Wikipedia this is divination by stones or the light reflected from them, although it doesn't provide much more information than that. I assume that the steroetypical crystal ball is related to this practice, although model ones tend to be made of glass.

Witchipedia.com states that there is little recorded history of lithomancy. Although the earliest recorded mention of the practice is the late 800s, the techniques have been lost. Witchipedia also proivides a suggested technique.

Just for fun, bonus L is Llewellyn. Not a method of divination, but a Mind, Body and Spirit publisher with an online tarot-reading section on their website. Which is fun and also has some lovely artwork.

Month of Blogging Challenge: K is for Knissomancy

13/4/2015

This is divination through the patterns of smoke, traditionally that of frankincense. Various factors, such as the speed the incense burned at, the patterns of the smoke and which direction it went in, were all taken into account. Occultopedia.com states that this form of divination was used in ancient cultures, such as the Ancient Egyptians and Romans, and that sugar, salt, and flour have sometimes been used as alternatives.

Knissomancy is part of a family of divinations called pyromancy, which as the name suggests is divination based on fire.

Month of Blogging Challenge: J is for Jyotisha

11/4/2015

Jyothisha, or Jyotish, is, according to Wikipedia, a traditional Hindu system of astrology and astronomy. It's also known as Vedic astrology, so I double-checked I had something for V before using it here - but really, there was nothing else for J.

Jyotisha is divided into the three branches of Siddhanta ("Indian astronomy"), Samhita - "mundane astrology", which deals with nationally important but hardly mundane events like wars and earthquakes - and Hora, which is detailed "predictive astrology".

There are sixteen divisional charts, known as Varga. Like Western astrology there are twelve signs of the zodiac, although the two traditions measure these differently. Wikipedia notes "Jyotiṣa uses primarily the sidereal zodiac (in which stars are considered to be the fixed background against which the motion of the planets is measured), whereas most Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac (the motion of the planets is measured against the position of the Sun on the Spring equinox)." Over time the differences have led to some drift - in Jyotisha the placement of the planets is still consistent with the actual zodiac, whereas in Western astrology planets fall into the following sign about two thirds of the time. Which might explain why some people born one sign in Western astrology later end up being another.

Jyotisha can be studied as a subject in some Indian universities.

Month of Blogging Challenge: I is for Ichthyomancy

10/4/2015

I originally had itching for this letter, however technically used it for E instead since that was a much harder letter to find anything for. Then I was going to do I-Ching, but that's really obvious, right?

So instead I have Ichthyomancy, which is (according to occultopedia.com) also known as Ichyomancy, Ichthiomantia, and another four names also beginning with I. It is, as the name suggests, divination by fish.

Observing the appearance and behaviour of the fish falls into the category of theriomancy, which is the study of animals and their behaviour. Often the fish was placed in a consecrated pool. Interpreting the entrails and heads is a form of augury, and falls into aruspicina - the same messy branch as yesterday's haruspicy.

Month of Blogging Challenge: H is for Haruspicy

9/4/2015

This is the technical term for the decidedly non-vegetarian practice of reading animal entrails, which the Romans apparently "borrowed" from the Etruscans. According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, practitioners were called haruspices, singular haruspex.

Bonus H, since this is a short one: the practice of looking specifically at the liver is called hepatoscopy. According to The Book of Divination by Anne Fiery this particular method was particularly favoured by the Babylonians and Etrurians, who believed it had been bestowed on them by Tages, Jupiter's grandson.

Month of Blogging Challenge: G is for Geomancy

8/4/2015

According to Ann Fiery's The Book of Divination, this is a method of fortune-telling that originated in North Africa in the ninth century, which consisted of reading randomly drawn lines in the sand. It was later appropriated by twelfth century European mystics who applied the technique to marks on paper.

Think of a question, then draw sixteen lines made up of random dots. Just like for the Dream Oraculum, you're only interested in whether these lines have an odd or even number of dots. You then translate these into four figures (using lines one to four, five to eight, etc).

From here it becomes even more horrifically complicated, as you then combine each row of these to create a series of "daughter" figures, and then use the "daughters" to create "nephews". You then consult a chart which tells you what it all means.

I can't help but think those twelfth century mystics had far too much time on their hands, and that the original method of drawing lines in the sand was far less complicated.

The Wikipedia article mentions that the term applies to any form of divination that involves interpreting handfuls of sand or stones tossed on the ground. If I'd only read that first I could have saved myself a lot of typing.

Month of Blogging Challenge: F is for Frogs

7/4/2015

I was struggling to come up with anything for F until I stumbled across a reference in The Book of English Magic, by Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate, to "Joan Mores of East Langdon in Kent, who in the sixteenth century told the future from the croaking of frogs".

Unfortunately the book doesn't elaborate on how this was done. My Google-fu has only been able to refine the date to 1525 via a Google Books scan of Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England by Keith Thomas.

So I Googled "divination by frog" instead, and came up with Occultopedia.com, which reveals that the proper name for frog divination is batrachomancy, which also covers toads and newts. Frogs croaking more than usual is a sign of bad weather to come, and to meet a frog means you'll come into money.

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