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Kau chim, kau cim, chien tung, [1] "lottery poetry" and Chinese fortune sticks are names for a fortune telling practice that originated in China in which a person poses questions and interprets answers from flat sticks inscribed with text or numerals.
Names like drimimantia, nigromantia, and horoscopia arose, along with other pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy. [ 1 ] Some forms of divination are much older than the Middle Ages, like haruspication , while others such as coffee-based tasseomancy originated in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Fortune telling is easily dismissed by critics as magical thinking and superstition. [24] [25] [26] Skeptic Bergen Evans suggested that fortune telling is the result of a "naïve selection of something that have happened from a mass of things that haven't, the clever interpretation of ambiguities, or a brazen announcement of the inevitable."
Breaking a mirror is said to bring seven years of bad luck [1]; A bird or flock of birds going from left to right () [citation needed]Certain numbers: The number 4.Fear of the number 4 is known as tetraphobia; in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, the number sounds like the word for "death".
Literomancy, from the Latin litero-, 'letter' + -mancy, 'divination', is a form of fortune-telling based on written words, or, in the case of Chinese, characters. A fortune-teller of this type is known as a literomancer. simplified Chinese: 测字; traditional Chinese: 測字; pinyin: cèzì)
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Occultism is one form of mysticism. [a] This list comprises and encompasses people, both contemporary and historical, who are or were professionally or otherwise notably involved in occult practices, including alchemists, astrologers, some Kabbalists, [b] magicians, psychics, sorcerers, and practitioners some forms of divination, especially Tarot.
If a distinction is made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, [citation needed] usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes.