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I came across this wonderful word in Michael Quinion's World Wide Words whilst searching unsuccessfully for the origin of a lick and a promise. I am putting it here partly because this category has been underused lately, and also, though I don't do this with serious intent, I think it is fun to do this just to see what you come up with:
"RHAPSODOMANCY
The seeking of guidance through the chance selection
of a passage in literature.
This term goes back to the ancient Greeks, in which verses uttered by the oracles were transcribed for random consultation in the sybilline books, or in which a phrase from one of the poets was picked on for guidance. Another example is the I Ching, an ancient book of wisdom in which hexagrams are consulted according to a random sequence that is generated by throwing sticks. Rhapsodomancy 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 our word ode), so such a person was a 'weaver of songs'. It is closely related to our rhapsody, which originally meant a section of an epic poem suitable for reading at one time, but which later took on the modern sense of some exaggeratedly enthusiastic or self-indulgently effusive piece of writing or music."
World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996-. All rights reserved.
Page created 1 August 1998.
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I've also heard of a practice of letting the bible fall open at a random page and taking a verse from that page to provide guidance in your life. Presumably this is also rhapsodomancy?
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i do that with songs; i put my favorite CDs on "random" then make a mental note to apply the next song i hear to whatever situation/person/etc i'm pondering. i'll bet there's a name for it. ironically, "rhapso-" would suggest music, to me. melodomancy, maybe? oh, and hi brid#1  glad to see ya posting again!!
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Jackie -- [useless trivia warning emoticon] -- there's a character called The Rhapsodist in the 'Babylonian' sequence of D W Griffith's splendid film "Intolerance" (1916). I can understand his part better after reading your post. Thanks.
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Thank you for this thread Jackie.
Coincidentally I have been thinking of the points that you have touched upon - symbols, epics and also Gods of writing.
I have as wall paper on my desk top a picture of the Greek god of writing Thoth. It is an odd looking thing with ugly feet, a long beak, a very small head, wise eyes and a laid back attitude. It has wings but I don't think it can fly.
In the Indian pantheon the compatriot of Thoth would be the elephant God Ganesha - I think - only because he was the one who set down in words the epic Mahabharata (which I am currently reading - hence these thoughts). Ved Vyas was the sage who composed the epic poems of the Mahabharata and Ganesh wrote them down.
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Wow, what a great place this board is! I had a feeling this word would strike a "chord" (rhapsodic?) with others as well as it did with me! And in just these few responses we've traveled from the Bible to Louisville to Indian and Greek gods. Thank you, Avy, for those things I had not known before. I laughed at your saying that evil-seeming creature has a "laid-back attitude"! Oh--Louisville, you ask? D.W. Griffith is from here, as I suspect my sweet paulb knows very well. There is a performance theater named for him in our Center for the Arts. Thank you. 
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In reply to:
I've also heard of a practice of letting the bible fall open at a random page and taking a verse from that page to provide guidance in your life. Presumably this is also rhapsodomancy?
not surprisingly, there is a unique word for this: bibliomancy (also refers to the use of books in general). there are sixty-some -mancys in the OED, not counting aldermancy, dormancy, etc. divination was big.
-joe (thumomancy) friday
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I have as wall paper on my desk top a picture of the Greek god of writing Thoth.
Greek? I thought Thoth was Egyptian, but perhaps also Greek from the Ptolemaic dynasty on Egypt?
If computer nerds have gods are they Geek Gods?
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Thoth
Yes, Thoth was an Egyptian god. The Greeks may have "borrowed" him, but I'm not sure about that. He was the god of wisdom and learning, and was associated with the moon. I believe ancient Egyptian scribes regarded Thoth as their patron, since he was associated with writing. He had the head of an ibis.
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If computer nerds have gods are they Geek Gods? I love it! Beware of geeks bearing gifts...
speaking of which, I have to put this riddle I thought up a little while ago:
What do you call a crazy boot-licker?
A Psychophant.
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> Yes, Thoth was an Egyptian god. The Greeks may have "borrowed" him, but I'm not sure about that.
No they didn't! Now why did I write greek? Sorry.
Rapunzel - do you know whether the Thoth can fly?
A few Gods of the Hindu Mythology :
Indra - The king of Gods who rides an Albino elephant called Airavath
Vayu - God of the Wind
Agni - God of Fire
Varun - God of the Waters
Yama - God of Death
Kamadeva - God of love and Sex
Surya - the Sun God
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Yama - God of DeathWell, that explains all those guys risking life and limb on motorcycles. Yama? Ha!
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Beware of geeks bearing gifts...
Or, as computer nerds from the Southern USA would have it, "Beware of geeks bearing grits."
What do you call a crazy boot-licker?
A Psychophant.
No, no, Jackie, a psychophant is an eight foot tall, six thousand pound, grey-skinned manic depressive.
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Jackie and Geoff -- And a Psycho- RANT is defined as follows: _______________________ ,a good example of which is _______________-.
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The Greeks already had Athena, so they didn't need another god of wisdom. Thoth was the god of wisdom in Egypt, and invented writing because of it.
jimthedog
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Jackie and Geoff -- And a Psycho- RANT is defined as follows:
And a psychopant is when your meditation backfires, and causes heavy breathing. This leads to transcendental masturbation.
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Thanks, jimthedog. What's cool about your posts is you nearly always manage to re-state the obvious. Thank you for that
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Greeks already had Athena, so they didn't need another god of wisdom.
Tsk, tsk, Jimthedog, you have been neglecting your Bulfinch's Mythology lately.
The Godess of Wisdom is Minerva. Her symbol is the owl.
wow
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> Yama - God of Death
> Well, that explains all those guys risking life and limb on motorcycles. Yama? Ha!
... and that is why Yama rides a Bison.
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Greeks already had Athena, so they didn't need another god of wisdom.
Tsk, tsk, Jimthedog, you have been neglecting your Bulfinch's Mythology lately.
The Godess of Wisdom is Minerva. Her symbol is the owl.Tentatively shuffling to the defence of jimthedog, Max proffers the following http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=10190&tocid=0Athena also spelled Athene, in Greek religion, the city protectress, goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason, identified by the Romans with Minerva (q.v.). She was essentially urban and civilized, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors. Athena was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess and was later taken over by the Greeks. Yet the Greek economy, unlike that of the Minoans, was largely military, so that Athena, while retaining her earlier domestic functions, became a goddess of war. 
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In reply to:
Tsk, tsk, Jimthedog, you have been neglecting your Bulfinch's Mythology lately.
The Godess of Wisdom is Minerva. Her symbol is the owl.
wow
You are thinking of the Romans. Their god was Minerva. I will admit that the Romans changed very little in the gods, besides the names and maybe one or two other things.
jimthedog
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Or, as computer nerds from the Southern USA would have it, "Beware of geeks bearing grits."Them's fightin' words, Geoff 
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Rapunzel - do you know whether the Thoth can fly?I've never seen Thoth depicted with wings, so I would guess that he can't. However, since he's a god, he can probably do whatever he pleases. I find it odd that your writing desk shows Thoth with wings--does he have the body of a bird, or just wings? The only pictures of Thoth that I've ever seen show him with a human body and an ibis head.
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Avy-- do tell us more about Mahabharata-- there was, almost 10 years ago a wonderful 10 hour production on PBS of the Mahabharata-- until that time, i had know very little about (i don't want to say it---(vedas?) there is a term for the epic poems/legends of india-- ) and to be honest, i still know almost nothing-- i wish they would rebroadcast it. Most of the Indian television in NY is "the indian movie channel" with hours of the big, brash, musical movies that are at once popular, and mocked. Most don't have subtitles, so i just flip by them.
I remember very little of the Mahabharata-- (there were some many new idea, concepts, people--) It was about an epic battle, and one side could have all the resources in the world-- and the other could have Vishnu-- a wise, but gentle god for council... and of course, in the end the good guys won. (4000 lines of poetry in a nutshell--in the same way the Iliad is about a pretty girl that get fought over-- for years, by thousand.)
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Jimthedog:
My apology. You are right.
wow
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Avy-- do tell us more about Mahabharata
I should probably let Avy do this, even though the Mahabharata is one of my favourite works of Hindu mythology - alas I only read versions in English (C Rajagopalachari's translations being the standards when we were kids).
Very roughly:
Pandu and Dhritarashtra - two brothers, sharing the kingdom. Pandu's sons - the five Pandavas - Yudhishtra, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva. Dhritarashtra's sons - one hundred of them, colectively called the Kauravas, eldest being Duryodhana.
What's sibling rivalry between cousins called? Anyway, whatever it was, they had it. After many years of bickering and not quite successfully sharing the kingdom between them, Duryodhana plots with his evil uncle Shakuni to cheat/beat Yudhishtra in a game of 'dice (played with cowrie shells, if I remember rightly), first humiliatingf the eldest Pandava, his family and their colective wife Draupadi. Then, upon, all being reset to zero by the old king Dhritarashtra, playing once a again and sending the Pandavas into exile for twelve plus one years. Many adventures ensure during exile. After the exile is over Duryodhana tells the Pandavas he will not give them back their kingdom. So war! Seventeen bloody days at Kurukshetra, at the end of which internecine slaughter, all the Kauravas are dead. All the Pandavas friends and relatives (including sons) are dead. Only the five Pandavas are left standing, as it were, and Arjuna's son's (Abhimanyu's) widow is pregnant with Arjuna's grandson - who eventually rules the kingdom when the Pandavas retire.
For what it's worth they all end up in heaven - including the 'evil' Kauravas.
The tale takes many, many, many, many, verses to tell, and until the discovery of some ultra-long Ukrainian saga recently, was considered the longest poem ever written - about four times as long as the Iliad and the Odyseey put together (correct me someone?)
There are too many interesting stories, characters and ideas in the work for it to be adequately summarised, though, and I pity anyone who tries.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Thank you Shanks-- One of the things that made it hard to remember all the detail of the story was keeping track of all the names... Most are not not common names in US -- and tracking relations-- who was part of which family. but as i watched it, ( in one 10 hour long marathon!) I was swept away to a mystical world.. and this was just snippets of the poem, being recited, as naration to the actions that was being portrayed.
at points, they recited in (hindu? sanskrit?) with the english as an overlay-- so you could hear the rythm and flow of the original..
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Hey Helen
Assuming that it was perhaps the Peter Hall version you saw - about nine or ten hours long, with Mrinalini Sarabhai (??) in the role of Draupadi?
Never got to see it myself, but heard it was very good. As an alternative, a truly awful version screened on Indian television in the early '90s - exploitative (of Indian reverence for the work), shoddily made, badly acted, and in general more like a sub-Bollywood film than a respectful, creative or original rendition of one of the world's major literary artefacts. Many more than 10 hours long - runs to tens and twenties of video cassettes (every pious Hindu must have a full set!)...
The original, as with all the 'old' Indian classics, is in Sanskrit.
And, oh yes, the old Hindu texts are often given the collective title the 'Puranas' - meaning the old ones.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Helen, yes - getting the Mahabharata into a nutshell is quite tough.
Ravi has said what it is about - rivalry between two sets of cousins for the throne of Hastinapur. I thought the best way to tell you something more about this is to write down a bit from the introduction of the book "Yuganta" by Irawati Karve in which are essays on events and characters of the Mahabharata. (Sorry - this next is bit long for a post - but I thought it would be interesting for you - it was for me.)
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"Mahabharata" is the name of a book in the Sanskrit language telling in very simple verse form the story of a family quarrel ending in a fierce battle. To the Indians in general, this is not an imaginary made up story, but represents a real event which took place about 1000BC. In the course of this narration, stories of the ancestors of the heroes who fought the battle are given. The heroes were princes who ruled a city called Hastinapur, situated somewhere near modern Delhi. The most illustrious amongst these ancestors was Bharata. From the name Bharata is derived the word Bharata which might mean any descendent of Baharata or any other aspect of Bharat, as for example a poem. "Maha" means great. The word Mahabharata lets us recognise stages in the making of this poem. Perhaps there was a simpler and less extensive story called Bharata and then by century long accretions, it became a Maha (the great) Bharata (book about the descendents of Bharata)
In the story as it is preserved, the chief narrators are different bards called "Sutas". A class of people called Sutas, representing the illegitimate progeny of the Kshatriyas (the warrior caste), performed various functions at the courts. They were counsellors and friends of kings, charioteers and also bards. Some of them moved from place to place, where ever they knew people were likely to assemble and told their stories which were mainly exploits of love and adventure of ancient and ruling kings and princes. A book in many respects like the Mahabharata was the Ramayana a narrative sung from place to place. Out of these grew a later type of literature called the "Puranas" (Purana = ancient = the story of the past). These besides the stories of barious Kshatriya dynasties, contianed cosmologies, cosmogonies and a lot of didactic matter. The narrators of the Puranas were also Sutas. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Puranas have been given a special name by a Dr. S.V Ketkar, who called it the Sauta literature, that is literature belonging to the Sutas, preserved and sung by the sutas and perhaps largely composed by them.
This literature embodied the secular and political traditions of Sanskrit literature as against another branch which is called Mantra. Mantra in Sanskrit means a hymn or magical formula. Mantra literature embodied hymns to gods, magical verses (as in the Rigveda and Atharvaveda), descriptions of rituals and the uses of hymns in ritual in addition to minute details of various sacrifices(as in the Yajurveda). There was also philosophical and esoteric discourse (as in the Upanishads and Aranyakas)
The gist of the rest in Avy's words : The Mahabharata later went from the Sutas into the hands of the Brahmans (priestly caste), who became jealous custodians of the literature and added to the originals as they pleased. But the additions (in Mahabharata) are so crude and out of context to the original story they can be detected easily. The mode of narration of the Mahabharata became the standard for some kinds of story literature in Sanskrit. This mode consists of stories within stories and the thread of the main story is taken up after many such narrations (rather like AWAD). Sometimes the main story seems almost forgotten or lost but then is taken up again. Readers of Arabian nights know this form which was apparently borrowed from the Mahabharata model.
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Forget Epic poems and ancient Goddesses!. Do not view the Forest and neglect our nearby resplendent flowering Laurel. We have our very own resident Goddess, our Cara Dea, right in our midst. O ye mortals! Charge your goblets with the divine nectar of your choosing, then stand and toast with me our Pandorean (all-gifted!) Cara Dea, also sometimes known, in another incarnation, as B96. (Caution - Any effort to unscramble this 3-egg mythological omelette may not be conducive to one's digestion.)
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Them's fightin' words, Geoff OK, Betsy, it's overcooked okra at twenty paces! My second will be calling on you! PS: Guess what I had for breakfast
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overcooked okra
No seconds for me, but thanks.
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carus deus, Scribbelerius... lest ye forget: Early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose. i just had a birthday, you know, and these 3100 years are quickly catching up with me
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The Mahabharata and Ramayana are also very popular here in Indonesia as the source for wayang . Wayang means something like performance and there are different kinds, wayang kulit (shadow puppets), wayang topeng (masked dance), and wayang wong (something like a musical).
A traditional wayang kulit performance lasts from dusk to dawn and will tell an episode from one of the epics, with all the parts played by one dalang (puppet master). The puppets are highly coloured two dimensional leather (kulit = leather or skin) figures manipulated by the dalang between a lamp and a screen; the audience watches the shadows from the other side of the screen. Even if they don't know the story, the audience can tell who's a good guy and who's a bad guy from the shape of the puppet (good guys have long straight noses for example) and the dalang's tone of voice (good guys have higher pitched ( not shrill), calmer voices). A gamelan orchestra accompanies the action and there's a chorus of women who sing in intervals between scenes to give the dalang a break. The performances tend to be in local languages like Sundanese, Javanese, or Balinese, rather than Indonesian, so my attention span is rather limited.
Bali also has the kecak dance which tells the story of the Ramayana. Dancers play the main roles, but there is no music, only a chorus of men (anything from 20 to 100) chanting "kecak kecak" (c = ch) at different tempos and volumes. They represent Hanuman's monkeys.
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