Anthropomancy

Divination by the entrails of human being.

Ancient practice of divination by the entrails of men or women. Herodotus said that Menelaus, detained in Egypt by poor winds, sacrificed two children of the country to discover his destiny by means of anthropomancy. Heliogabalus practiced this means of divination. It is said that in his magical operations, Julian the Apostate caused a large number of children to be killed so that he might consult their entrails. During his last expedition at Carra, in Mesopotamia, he shut himself in the Temple of the Moon. After completing his anthropomancy, he sealed the doors and posted a guard, whose duty it was to see that they were not opened until his return. However, he was killed in battle with the Persians, and those who entered the Temple of Carra, in the reign of Julian's successor, found there a woman hanging by her hair, with her liver torn out. The infamous Gilles De Laval may also have practiced this dreadful type of divination.

Sources:

Waite, Arthur Edward. The Occult Sciences. 1891. Reprint, Secaucus, N.J.: University Books, 1974.

Occult portal

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

Anthropomancy (from Greek anthropos (ανθροπος, man), and manteia (μαντεια, divination) is a method of divination by the entrails of dead or dying men or women, often virgin female children, through sacrifice.^{[citation needed]} This practice was sometimes also called splanchomancy. In ancient Etruria and Rome, the usual variety of divination from entrails was haruspicy (performed by an haruspex), in which the sacrifice was an animal.

The ancient Egyptians were allegedly practitioners of this type of divination.^{[citation needed]}

Practitioners in fiction

• Darken Rahl

This occult-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)