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myomancy - foretelling the future using the movement of mice
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I knew that people came up with some weird stuff in the past, but dang!
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myomancy - foretelling the future using the movement of miceSome think mice have more sense than men, Logwood. "Who Moved My Cheese?"http://snipurl.com/gp5k
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Carpal Tunnel
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still, with all the choices and methods, one has to think that astrology was one of the more popular methods.
--today almost every big city newspaper has an astrology column, (in the US, the NYTimes and WSJ are notable exceptions)--and every 'knows' their 'sign'.
and we do have disastor as a word..
The desire to know the future seems to be a human failing. but there old (Deirde) and new (Dune) stories about the paradox of knowing the future.
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You know, for a thin book the price for that is outrageous. Besides, people on Amazon claimed it's more like "a guide for the businessman".
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stranger
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Just as there are many internet sites which attempt to list our countless phobias, there are a good several which list methods of divination. Here's one of the more enlightened ones: http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/DivinationHere you'll find everything from capnomancy to catoptromancy [smoke and mirrors, respectively]; I personally like cybermancy [computer oracles]. The site has expanded definitions for each. the Contrarian
the Contrarian
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like Deirdre--i think to know the future it to be trapped.. to be robbed of free will.
Deirde is a classic irish tale of a young girl who future is told at her birth.. she is cursed--it is said over her, the will be enough tears shed to fill the lakes of ireland..
every moment of her life is foretold.. in the end, she commits suicide, when she realize, no where in all the omens and predictions is her death mentioned.. She realizes her life is a pretold story that she is trapped in, but her death is her decision.
to know the future is curse. (the trilogy Dune recognizes the same truth)
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to know the future is curse
You never cease to amaze, Of Troy, with the range of your knowledge.
"To know the future is a curse."
How true.
But to glimpse the future.
What power!
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I encountered the name "Deirdre" many times, it's nice to know it has history.
By the way, there was also "foretelling the future by the lungs..." or something like that. I forgot the word though.
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By the way, there was also "foretelling the future by the lungs..."Yes, it's called aeolomancy, Logwood. After: Ae·o·lus (ç'ə-ləs) n. Greek Mythology. The god of the winds.http://snipurl.com/gp7y
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Deirde is one of several 'classic tales' of irish literature. in the early 1950's a modern retelling of the tale was done by James Stephens. (the book is out of print)
Stephens enjoyed some small notarity in US in the 1950's and toured as a visiting professer. His popularity in ireland lasted well into the 1990's (and might still linger) Stephen's was a friend of James Joyce, and Joyce often said, "If i die before i finish Finigan's Wake, James (Stephens) is the man to finish it."
though his lecture tours were before my time, the popularity of his books and works lingered on in irish neighborhood near the universities he lectured at--and i grew up next to one.. (Fordham) Stephens poetry can be found in several anthologies.
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"If i die before i finish Finigan's Wake, James (Stephens) is the man to finish it."
Yes, but he also said he would change the title:
Wake Me Before it's Over. :)
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I encountered Deirdre in Edward Rutherfurd's "Dublin", in the first story of howmany there are (I never got to the end, it's a thick book).
Plutarch, I don't think that's the word. Or at least the dictionary I used to find that word does not acknowledge "aeolomancy".
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well, if either of you had troubled to avail yourself of thecontrarian's useful link (above), you would have found Aeromancy (or Anemoscopy). http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Anemoscopyedit: actually, it looks like the source of all of that divination info may be Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divination(page down for the list)
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If either of you had troubled .... you would have found Aeromancy (or Anemoscopy)
Never one to blow a divine opening, tsuwm, may I take this opportunity to introduce you to one of my recent contributions to OEDILM.com?
"Passing gas is not that impolite,"
Said my father one cold, windy night.
"You have nothing to fear
From a fart blown so near.
Anemophobia is the name for your fright."
Author's Note:
Some people are surprised that others are disquieted by their boisterous crepitations. They attribute such reactions to anemophobia, an irrational fear of drafts or wind.
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JFTR, "The following limerick is in a "Tentative" state, which means the information contained within has not yet been verified."
But I don't want to denigrate all of your efforts; how many of your limericks have been "verified" over there?
The Lone Haranguer
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how many of your limericks have been "verified" over there?
Happy to give OEDILF.com a plug, snoot.
They are quite literally overwhelmed with popularity. It can take 6 months and more to get a limerick through the process because it has to be reviewed by four [unpaid] reviewers and then the Editor in Chief. [I'm not an expert but that is my understanding of the process.] Final approval itself can take months. First-time submitters receive priority first review.
It happens none of my own limericks have been in the pipeline long enough to make it through, although I have many in what they call "RFA" ["Ready for Final Approval"].
It's not a big thing to be "verified", snoot. It means your limerick is technically perfect [rhyme, meter, stresses, whatever] and it provides accurate information about the word defined. It's just for fun.
In time, I'm sure, OEDILF.com will produce more reviewers and they will catch up to the gigantic bulge at the front end. They are a victim of their own success - at least, in their first year of operation.
Thanks for asking.
P.S. Anemophobia is a very recent submission. I will be happy to let you know when it's verified, snoot, but it's unlikely to happen in this calendar year.
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In reply to:
Stephens enjoyed some small notarity in US in the 1950's and toured as a visiting professer. His popularity in ireland lasted well into the 1990's (and might still linger) Stephen's was a friend of James Joyce, and Joyce often said, "If i die before i finish Finigan's Wake, James (Stephens) is the man to finish it."
though his lecture tours were before my time, the popularity of his books and works lingered on in irish neighborhood near the universities he lectured at--and i grew up next to one..
But what was he notorious for?
Bingley
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Wordwind may remember that Smintheus (Mouse-killer) was a title of Apollo in the Iliad. Chryseis, the girl all the fuss was over at the beginning of the Iliad, was the daughter of the priest of Apollo Smintheus. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology and Biography notes that The mouse was regarded by the ancients as inspired by the vapours arising from the earth, and as the symbol of prophetic power. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104&query=head=#17627&word=SMINTHEUSBingley
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The mouse was regarded by the ancients as inspired by the vapours arising from the earth, and as the symbol of prophetic power.Interesting, Bingley. This debate about "intoxicating gases" and "prophetic powers" goes all the way back to the to "oracle of Delphi". Delphic Oracle's Lips May Have Been Loosened by Gas VaporsNational Geographic News, August 14, 2001 The oracle of Delphi in Greece was the telephone psychic of ancient times: People came from all over Europe to call on the Pythia at Mount Parnassus to have their questions about the future answered. Her answers could determine when farmers planted their fields or when an empire declared war.
The Pythia, a role filled by different women from about 1400 B.C. to A.D. 381, was the medium through which the god Apollo spoke.
According to legend, Plutarch, a priest at the Temple of Apollo, attributed Pythia's prophetic powers to vapors.Other accounts suggested the vapors may have come from a chasm in the ground.
This traditional explanation, however, has failed to satisfy scientists. In 1927, French geologists surveyed the oracle's shrine and found no evidence of a chasm or rising gases. They dismissed the traditional explanation as a myth.
Their conclusion was aggregated by a modern misconception that vapors and gases could only be produced by volcanic activity.
Now, a four-year study of the area in the vicinity of the shrine is causing archaeologists and other authorities to revisit the notion that intoxicating fumes loosened the lips of the Pythia.
The study, reported in the August issue of Geology, reveals that two faults intersect directly below the Delphic temple. The study also found evidence of hallucinogenic gases rising from a nearby spring and preserved within the temple rock.
"Plutarch made the right observation," said Jelle De Boer, a geologist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and co-author of the study. "Indeed, there were gases that came through the fractures."http://snipurl.com/gqll
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...to know the future is curse. (the trilogy Dune recognizes the same truth)
And many others before and since.
When my mother was 85 and dying from lung cancer, she scared the daylights out of one of the aides in her Assisted Living facility by struggling out of bed, staring out the window, and reciting with perfect lucidity a verse she had committed to memory sixty-five or so years earlier, in her more-flagrantly-Emily-Dickinson phase:
SONNET
Oh, bless the law that veils the future's face;
For who could smile into a baby's eyes,
Or bear the beauty of the evening skies,
If he could see what cometh on apace?
The ticking of the death watch would replace
The baby's prattle for the overwise;
The breeze's murmur would become the cries
Of stormy petrels where the breakers race.
We live and move the walker in his sleep,
Who moves because he sees not the abyss
His feet are skirting as he goes his way:
If we could see the morrow from the steep
Of our security, the soul would miss
Its footing and fall headlong from today.
-- Eugene Lee-Hamilton
And she had copied it out, too; I was surprised to find it afterwards in a hand-written book of transcriptions of poems that had caught her eye. I have no idea how many times in the interval she might have thought of it; I know it was the first time my sister or I had ever heard it.
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How startling that she drew herself up to stare through a window to recite it. Yes, if we are to see the future, it is a blessing that we should only see it "as through a glass, darkly". "For now we see through a glass, darkly" http://snipurl.com/gsa0Thanks for sharing your moving story, wofahulicodoc.
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