n.
Divination by means of a wand or rod, especially for discovering underground water or ores.
[Late Greek rhabdomanteia : Greek rhabdos, rod + Greek -manteia, -mancy.]
rhabdomancer rhab'do·man'cer n.
rhabdomancy
Dictionary:
rhab·do·man·cy (răb'də-măn'sē) 
|
n.
Divination by means of a wand or rod, especially for discovering underground water or ores.
| Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia: Rhabdomancy |
Term for divination by divining-rods. Deriving from Greek words meaning "a rod" and "divination," it was thus alluded to by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82): "As for the divination or decision from the staff, it is an augurial relic, and the practice thereof is accused by God himself: 'My people ask counsel of their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them.' Of this kind was that practised by Nabuchadonosor in that Caldean miscellany delivered by Ezekiel."
John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777) cited a manuscript, John Bell's Discourse on Witchcraft (1705): "They set up two staffs, and having whispered some verses and incantations, the staffs fell by the operation of demons. Then they considered which way each of them fell, forward or backward, to the right or left hand, and agreeably gave responses, having made use of the fall of their staffs for their signs."
The practice is said to have passed from the Chaldeans and Scythians to the German tribes, who used pieces from the branch of a fruit tree, which they marked with certain characters and threw at hazard upon a white cloth. Something like this, according to one of the rabbis, was the practice of the Hebrews, only instead of characters, they peeled their rods on one side and drew the presage from their manner of falling. The Scythians and the Alani used rods of the myrtle and sallow, and as the latter chose "fine straight wands" according to Herodotus, it may be inferred that their method was that of the Hebrews, or some modification of it.
| Obscure Words: rhabdomancy |
| Wikipedia: Rhabdomancy |
Rhabdomancy is a type of divination by means of any rod, wand, staff, stick, arrow, or the like.
One method of rhabdomancy was setting a number of staffs on end and observing where they fall, to divine the direction one should travel, or to find answers to certain questions.[1][2] It has also been used for divination by arrows (which have wooden shafts) - otherwise known as belomancy.[3] Less commonly it has been assigned to the I Ching, which uses small wooden rods,[4] and also dowsing, which often uses a wooden stick.[5][6]
Rhabdomancy has been used in reference to a number of Biblical verses. St Jerome connected Hosea 4.12, which reads "My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them" (KJV), to Ancient Greek rhabdomantic practices.[7][8][9] Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, notes that Ezekiel 21.21 describes the divination by arrows of Nebuchadnezzar II as rhabdomancy, though this can also be termed belomancy.[10][11] Numbers 17 has also been attributed to rhabdomancy.[12]
W.F. Kirby, an English translator of the Kalevala, notes that in Runo 49, Väinämöinen uses rhabdomancy, or divination by rods, to learn where the sun and moon are hidden, but this interpretation is rejected by Aili Kolehmainen Johnson (1950).
Etymology
The word first appears in English in the mid-17th century (used in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646), where it is an adaptation of Late Latin rhabdomantia, from a presumed (unrecorded) ancient Greek *rhabdomanteia, from the ancient Greek ῥαβδος (rhabdos) a rod.[13] Liddell & Scott are "dubious" about the word's existence in Classical Greek, though the word is well attested in Patristic Greek. Note that none of the divinatory practices denoted by rhabdomancy in English are documented from ancient Greece sources.
See also
References
- ^ N. Homes, Daemonologie and Theologie 1650, viii. p.80
- ^ Brand, Popular Antiquities 1844, iii. p.332
- ^ Howitt trans. Ennemoser The History of Magic 1893, ii. p.460
- ^ J. Thomson trans. Cornelius Pauw. Philosophical Dissertations on the Egyptians and Chinese. London: T. Chapman, 1795. II. 164.
- ^ Thomas Gamaliel Bradford. Encyclopædia Americana Desilver, Thomas, & Co., 1835. XI. p.8.
- ^ Gaynor (ed.) Dictionary of Mysticism 1953 (1974) p.155
- ^ J.S. Forsyth. Demonologia; or, Natural knowledge revealed. London, John Bumpus, 1827. p.156
- ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd ed.) 1797, vol. VII p.67
- ^ Cheyne & Black, Encyclopædia Biblica 1899, i. 1117/1
- ^ Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (2nd ed.) 1650, p.232.
- ^ Howitt trans. Ennemoser The History of Magic 1893, ii. p.460
- ^ Lock trans. de Givry, Picture Museum of Sorcery 1931 (1963) viii. 311
- ^ "Oxford English Dictionary: Rhabdomancy. 2nd ed. 1989". http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50205815.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
| Translations: Rhabdomancy |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - rhapdomantik (finde vand med en ønskekvist)
Nederlands (Dutch)
wichelroede gebruiken
Français (French)
n. - rhabdomancie
Deutsch (German)
n. - Wünschelrutengehen
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ραβδομαντεία, ραβδοσκοπία
Italiano (Italian)
rabdomanzia
Português (Portuguese)
n. - rabdomancia (f)
Русский (Russian)
отыскание воды ореховым прутиком
Español (Spanish)
n. - uso de la varilla de zahorí, rabdomancia
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - gå med slagruta
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
棍卜, 棒卜术
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 棍卜, 棒蔔術
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) التكهن بالقضيب وبخاصه لإكتشاف المعادن و الينابيع
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - שימוש במטה-ניחוש (בצורת Y) לגילוי מים, מחצבים וכד'
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Obscure Words. © 2008 by Michael A. Fischer http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rhabdomancy". Read more |
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