While looking for some hogwash words I found tyromancy. The "-mancy" portion suggests divination, fortune telling, but what with? I will post again with the answer later in the day. And does anyone else have any other surprising -mancy examples? Or practice any -mancies themselves? and yes, I do know the limerick about the nancy boy in Khartoum Rod
Tyromancy - divination by patterns formed in coagulating cheese it was blue cheese!
Congrats Dr. Bill. What happens if you eat some of the cheese cos you got hungry waiting for it to coagulate? Does it affect the fortune telling? "I'm sorry - you were going to marry a beautiful princess, but my friend here just ate her." Sounds like a hovel scene from Monty Python.
bibliomancy: fortunetelling by random Bible-passage picking. aeromancy: fortunelling by air or wind; weather forecasting. ophiomancy: fortunetelling with snakes. mazomancy: fortunetelling by a nursing baby (Greek mazos = breast; see mazophilous). xenomancy: fortunetelling by studying the first stranger who appears. More to follow.
and Lizzie Borden day was just this past Saturday ...
Lizzie Borden took an axe Gave her father forty whacks When she saw what she had done She gave her mother forty-one
And she divined: that if you are a wealthy, prominent Victorian maiden who hires as defense counsel the former Governor of the state who appointed to the bench one of the judges presiding at your trial, you will be acquitted.
Dear Sparteye: Axinomancy could not have told Lizzie Borden who her judges would be. And she did not need to divine her choice of defense counsel. I didn't know until I looked at encyclopedia just now that her real mother died when she was age 2. Maybe her stepmother was out of Grimm's fairy tales. I wonder what bearing her father's will had on the disposition of his estate, and if Lizzie knew what was in the will.
rabdomanzia (= rabdomancy, I suppose) This is not fortune telling, but has the same kind of root. In fact, there are people that pretend to be able to guess where the water is in the underground, by walking and holding in their hands a Y-shaped stick: when the stick "moves", it should be a good place to drill a well.
aleuromancy, Divination by means of flour. chiromancy, Palmistry Alphitomancy, Divination using a leaf of barley. Tasseomancy, The art of reading tea leaves. Lecanomancy, Divination by throwing stones into water Critomancy, divination using cakes Dactylomancy, divination with rings Molybdomancy, divination by dropping metal into water Omphalomancy, divination by the navel
The only word I know for what a water witch does is dowsing, but rabdomancy is: Divination by means of rods or wands. I learn something new every day...thanks!
here is a website with a bunch of detailed information about all the different -mancies:
" rabdomanzia (= rabdomancy, I suppose) This is not fortune telling, but has the same kind of root. In fact, there are people that pretend to be able to guess where the water is in the underground, by walking and holding in their hands aY-shaped stick: when the stick "moves", it should be a good place to drill a well."
Rhabdomancy
Amazing what some people will believe. A long time ago the Boston Herald columnist Bill Cunningham had a friend who was such an accomplished "dowser" that he was able to locate a place to dig a well in Bermuda by pointing his dowsing rod at a map of Bermuda Now, that's a remarkable skill.
Critomancy is an ancient form of divination of cakes. The paste of cakes which were offered in sacrifice were divinated. Omens were drawn from the flour spread upon them after being strewn upon sacrifices.
I would guess that these were edible cakes, but I'm not sure.
Critomancy is an ancient form of divination of cakes. The paste of cakes which were offered in sacrifice were divinated. Omens were drawn from the flour spread upon them after being strewn upon sacrifices.
I would guess that these were edible cakes, but I'm not sure.
I, for one, have never seen a ceremonial offering of soap to the gods... Oh Great and Powerful Stink God! Bathe thyself and be clean!
mavomancy ~ The ability to divine the incoherencies of vast alias empires on discussion boards! [the-any-emoticon-will-do-e]
okay ~ i wasn't going to get involved in this (think pot/kettle/black), but it seems only fair to point out that mav has repeatedly denied a connection to anyone but archie, who was cleverly constructed to give us a good laugh (successfully, i might add). perhaps my thinking is vastly different than that of the rest of you, but to belabor this point seems a bit confrontational.
that being said, and as mav alluded to in a recent post... there's one person aBoard who i *personally know to be a huge beatles fan, a frequent poster at VH1.com, and a riddler..... our very own W'ON!!
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