Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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."
The Fortune Teller, by Enrique Simonet (1899; canvas; Museo de Málaga), depicting a palm reading. Pagtatawas by reading melted alum; pallomancy: by pendulums (Greek pallein, ' to sway ' + manteía, ' prophecy ') palmistry/palm reading → see somatomancy (Latin palma, ' palm ')
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.
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.
An elaborately decorated fortune teller. A fortune teller is a form of origami used in children's games. Parts of the fortune teller are labelled with colors or numbers that serve as options for a player to choose from, and on the inside are eight flaps, each concealing a message.
Tyromancy is a method of divination or fortune-telling using cheese. Written accounts of the practice date from the 2nd century AD, with it reaching the height of its popularity in the Middle Ages and early modern period. In the 21st century, the practice draws on methods from dream interpretation and antique spell manuals.
Tasseography (also known as tasseomancy, tassology, or tasseology) is a divination or fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediments. The terms derive from the French word tasse ( cup ), which in turn derives from the Arabic loan-word into French tassa , and the respective Greek suffixes -graph ...
The word derivation of the Latin psȳchē is from the Greek psȳchḗ, literally "breath", derivative of psȳ́chein, to breathe or to blow (hence, to live). [10] French astronomer and spiritualist Camille Flammarion is credited as having first used the word psychic, while it was later introduced to the English language by Edward William Cox in ...