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The word oracle comes from the Latin verb ōrāre, "to speak" and properly refers to the priest or priestess uttering the prediction. In extended use, oracle may also refer to the site of the oracle, and the oracular utterances themselves, are called khrēsmoí (χρησμοί) in Greek.
Lycurgus Consulting the Pythia (1835/1845), as imagined by Eugène Delacroix.. Pythia was the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi.There are more than 500 supposed oracular statements which have survived from various sources referring to the oracle at Delphi.
The business the reader has is either silently or openly expressed to the oracle, and the oracle responds in kind. The text's standard construction of the inquirer then is one who has come from a foreign place to the oracle, puts the business or activities he wants to conduct to the god, and then receives an answer.
In the Spanish Golden Age theater play Life is a Dream by Calderon de la Barca, an oracle drives the plot. A prophecy reveals that king's infant son, Segismundo , will disgrace Poland and one day kill his father, but the king grants his son a chance to prove the oracle wrong.
Scapulimancy (also spelled scapulomancy and scapulamancy, also termed omoplatoscopy or speal bone reading) is the practice of divination by use of scapulae or speal bones (shoulder blades). It is most widely practiced in China and the Sinosphere as oracle bones , but has also been independently developed in other traditions including the West .
Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron which were used in pyromancy – a form of divination – during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – c. 1050 BCE) in ancient China. Scapulimancy is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, plastromancy if turtle plastrons were used.
Cartomancy using standard playing cards was the most popular form of providing fortune-telling card readings in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The standard 52-card deck is often augmented with jokers or even with the blank card found in many packaged decks.
Tarot card reading is a form of cartomancy whereby practitioners use tarot cards to purportedly gain insight into the past, present or future. They formulate a ...