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A man practicing Nggam with a crab A crab in a divination pot. Nggam ([ŋgam]) is a type of divination found among many groups in western Cameroon.Among the best documented is its practice by the Mambila people of Cameroon and Nigeria, in which the actions of spiders or crabs are interpreted by the diviner.
Cicero concerns himself in some detail with the types of divination, dividing them into the "inspired" type (Latin furor, Gk. mania, "madness"), especially dreams, and the type which occurs via some form of skill of interpretation (i.e., haruspicy, extispicy, augury, astrology, and other oracles).
The first recorded mention of tyromancy is believed to be in Oneirocritica, a 2nd-century AD treatise on dream interpretation by Greek diviner Artemidorus of Daldis. [1] [2] He claimed it to be one of the most unreliable forms of divination, writing that "the truth is spoken by sacrificers and bird-diviners and astrologers and observers of wonders and dream diviners and liver-examiners alone".
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. The chapter "How Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa" of Gargantua and Pantagruel , a parody on occult treatises of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa , contains a list of over two ...
The art of geomancy was one of the more popular forms of divination practiced during the Renaissance. It is a form of divination in which any question may be answered by casting sand, stone, or dirt on the ground and reading the shapes, using tables of geomantic figures for interpretation. [3]
Belomancy, also bolomancy, is the ancient art of divination by use of arrows. The word is built upon Ancient Greek: βέλος, romanized: belos, lit. 'arrow, dart', and μαντεία, manteia, 'divination'. Belomancy was anciently practiced at least by Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs and Scythians.
This method of divination is one of the few which may have occurred sporadically, or independently in different places, as there is so much in a ringing, vibrating sound which resembles a voice. The custom is very ancient and almost universal; so Joseph (Genesis 44:5) says ("Vulgate"), "Scyphus quam furati estis, ipse est, in quo bibit Dominus ...
The style of astragalomancy using numerical trigrams was widespread, and evidence of such is found in Turkish, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Sogdian divination texts [20] from the sixth century through to the 10th century. One particular text is called the Divination of Maheśvara, found on the silk road frontier of Dunhuang. [21]