WORDSPEAK
Acts of divination
BY ANAND
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People's need to know the future has led to new words.
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The oldest profession in any culture or society could have been that of a soothsayer. There are over two hundred words with the suffix — mancy.
Photo: R. Raju
Future perfect: Ornithomancy at work.
ANU GARG, author of A Word A Day, posted some words about forecasting and divination on his website. One of the words was bibliomancy.
Bibliomancy is a form of divination that seeks to know the future by randomly selecting a passage from a book, frequently a sacred text. Because of the root `biblio', the word is often wrongly attributed to the Bible, rather than to any holy book. Among Christians, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are most commonly used; Jews consult the Old Testament. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs do bibliomancy with their own sacred texts for a variety of reasons, including deciding a newborn's name, to choose a day for travel, and to settle disputes.
Bibliomancy comes from Greek biblio (book) + mancy (divination). A closely related word is stichomancy, which involves selecting a passage at random from any book. The ancient Romans did stichomancy with Virgil's Aeneid, and the practice continued until the Middle Ages in Europe. The Greeks swore by their Homer. How imaginative, curious and personal bibliomancy/stichomancy can be is seen in the example of Wilkie Collins's novel The Moonstone where one of the characters considers Robinson Crusoe to be the perfect guide to life. I Ching is considered by some to be simply a system of divination, but others believe that it represents the wisdom and philosophy of ancient China
Special status
It's the suffix `mancy' that opens up a Pandora's box. Men and women have always wanted to know the future, to be foretold of the vagaries of nature. For that very reason, they believe in superstitions and in supernatural powers. The skill or act of telling what will happen in the future or discovering something that is unknown or secret by magical methods gives a person — who is believed to have the ability — a special status. The oldest profession in any culture or society could have been that of a soothsayer. There are over two hundred words with the suffix — mancy. Mantic (relating to divination, prophetic) shares the same etymology.
Arithmancy, also known as numerology, is divination by numbers. Harry Potter fans will recognise it as one of the subjects taught at Hogwarts School where the boy studies the art of wizardry. Aastragalomancy is divination by means of small bones or dice. So as not to fill us this space with unpronounceable mouthfuls, suffice it to say that there are mantic words for everything from the macabre to the esoteric, from the bizarre to the familiar, and then some.
Pedomancy is divination by examining the soles of the feet, odontomancy by using teeth, halomancy by using salt, and oomancy employs eggs for the purpose of divination. The most common method uses egg whites, which are dropped into boiling water, and the future is told on the basis of the shapes held by the cooked egg. Gastromancy deciphers the meaning of words seemingly uttered from the stomach, and must be popular in places without antacids and anti-flatulents.
Hippomancy is divination by horses, or by the neighing of horses, scatomancy tells the future by the examination of faeces, especially animal, urimancy is fortune telling using urine, and dririmancy is divination by dripping blood. Not to be outdone are kephalonomancy, which is divination using a baked ass's head, and omphalomancy, by counting the knots in a baby's umbilical cord. In ancient Rome, a favourite method of divination was by inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals (yes, there's a word for that too).
Before the editors decide to cut the text for the fear of offending readers' sensibilities, let's slip in rhapsodomancy, in which a phrase from a poet is selected for the purpose of divination. The word comes from the Greek rhapsoidos, someone who recites epic poems, particularly the Homeric odes; its roots are rhaptein, "to sew together; stitch" and oide, "song" (the source of ode), so such a person was a "weaver of songs".
The mantic arts
Indian readers will be familiar with the mantic arts that fall under necromancy, the act of prophesying by conjuring up the dead. In the west, necromancy exists in many guises including spiritual séances, and using mediums to receive messages from the dead. Such mantic practices are a part of all Indian religions, and of folk culture and belief. Necromancy also deals with the harnessing of occult forces or evil spirits, what the `vaam maarg' of tantra is all about. Tantric terminology has scores of specialised words for particular practices and forms of sadhna.
Divination through the medium of animals, birds and insects made me think of a sight common in bazaars and streets all over India; of the fortune-teller using a parrot or another bird to pick out a card with someone's fortune inscribed on it. Since ornithology is the branch of zoology that studies birds, the prospect of coining a new word with the suffix — mancy seemed rather exciting. Until a dictionary of obsolete words burst the bubble of my imagination with ornithomancy, divination by means of birds, their flight, etc.
E-mail: anand@journalist.com
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