Book the Third, XXV: How Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa. (The -mancy chapter.)

The grand finale: the full -mancy chapter in all its glory! The -mancies are mostly toward the end; see if you can find the one I've just discovered I forgot to write up...

"Nevertheless," quoth Epistemon, continuing his discourse, "I will tell you what you may do, if you believe me, before we return to our king. Hard by here, in the Brown-wheat (Bouchart) Island, dwelleth Herr Trippa. You know how by the arts of astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, metopomancy, and others of a like stuff and nature, he foretelleth all things to come; let us talk a little, and confer with him about your business."

Omphalomancy

Meaning: Divination by belly button; apparently inspection of a baby's navel can reveal the number of children the mother will bear, although there's another theory that this originally involved counting the number of knots in the umbilical cord.

Usefulness: 1 (Forget numbers of children, it's terribly useful to have a word for the outcome of omphaloskepsis* - consideration of one's navel. "How did you arrive at this result, Jenkins?" "It took considerable omphalomancy, sir, but we go there in the end.")

Logofascination: 2 (I like this almost as much as tyromancy, but etymologically it's just the Greek for navel and -mancy.)

In the wild:  Not really, but someone has helpfully compiled a montage of bellybuttons for Wikipedia.

Lecanomancy

Meaning: Cotgrave: divination by water in a basin. Often involves adding something to the water and observing the patterns: oil, tiles, etc.

Usefulness: 3 (I might have been fascinated 31 -mancys ago, but things are at the point where even my mother is over the -mancys. There is one more, but it's pretty boring so I'll be doing the most interesting of the other -mancys out there and then stopping.  These have all been from the one chapter of the third book of Gargantua and Pantagruel, for those of you who missed the start.)

Logofascination: 2 (Divination by dish: pretty straightforward, but highlights the lack of other descendants from the λεκάνη root.)

In the wild: No, but I'm rather fond of the intro to the Wikipedia article: "a form of divination which, like many ancient forms of divination, has multiple interpretations".  I wonder sometimes if this is because only  three people ever practiced them. )

Chiromancy

Meaning: Cotgrave, ever honest:

Palmistrie; a guessing at ones fortune by the markes, or making, of his hand.

Usefulness: 3 (I suppose you could extend it to the practice of judging people by their handshake, but it's not the most interesting of words.)

Logofascination: 2 (From the Greek for hand and divination, of course, and therefore related to chironomatic. And, yes, chiropractors.)

In the wild: Palmistry is one of the more well known -mancys, so there are any number of discussions out there. Of course, what one chiromancer considers blatantly obvious, another will dismiss as archaic nonsense, so if you must Google, do so wisely and widely.

Hydromancy

Meaning: Cotgrave:*

Divination by the observation of water, or by spirits appearing in it.

Usefulness: 2 (It covers a wide range of -mancys, including ceromancy and catoptromancy, the time-honoured witch-test, the mirror of Galadriel, and even raises your basic throwing-pebbles-into-water to a form of divination.)

Logofascination: 3 (The Greek hydro- is ultimately from the same root as water, and vodka, and otters.)

In the wild: Yes; as with pyromancy, there are those who confuse divination with spell-casting, and use it incorrectly. There's also a how-to video out there, this being the internet.

Pyromancy

Meaning: divination by fire, as I'm sure you all knew already. There are many, many forms of this particular -mancy (including axinomancy), as it can also include divination by smoke (libanomancy) or ashes (tephromancy).

Usefulness: 1 (Of course it most commonly refers to that ancient human practice: staring into a flame. Pyromancy can therefore be used to refer to any moment where you or your companions are captivated by a match, candle, campfire, bushfire, etc.)

Logofascination: 1 (Besides being o-l-d, the way the word fire is old - they were the same word once, after all - looking up pyro- in the dictionary can lead you to interesting things like the pyrophone.

In the wild: Sadly, its most common use on the net is wrong; in extrapolating from necromancer, some think that a pyromancer is someone who can use fire as weapon, and pyromancy is therefore not the power of seeing things in fire, but of summoning / wielding fire.

Aleuromancy

Meaning: divination by baked goods with some kind of prophecy or philosophy implanted; fortune cookies are an obvious example.

Usefulness: 1 (Fancy words for common things are always useful.)

Logofascination: 2 (The spelling is an issue; Sir Thomas has alentomancy - which I think sounds nicer - probably influenced by Cotgrave's alebromantie which is in turn probably a mis-reading or -hearing of alevromantie. The OED assures me that it's aleuromancy, from the Greek for flour, and cites a corrected passage.)

In the wild: It's the internet: someone performs divination via photos of flour on tumblr*. Perhaps I should ask them to divine how you will subscribe to this blog after Google Reader dies (along with what little affection I had left for Google). Heck, I should ask how I'm going to read any of the 43 obscure things I subscribe to.

Alphitomancy

Meaning: Divination by barley meal or barley bread. Depending on your level of desperation, while eating it the guilty party will choke and die, suffer from indigestion, cough a little, or their stomach will rumble.

Usefulness: 2 (Provides the opportunity to denounce someone as a sorceror - or epithet of your choice - when they choke on their food.)

Logofascination: 2 (Also known as corsned.)

In the wild:  By this theory, irritable bowel is in fact a symptom of a guilty conscience.  One of the few -mancys I can see a glimmer of sense in; bake some indigestible bread and find out who has the most nervous stomach. Allegedly what killed Godwin, Earl of Essex.

Coscinomancy

Meaning: Divination by the sieve and shears. It's difficult to explain, but Brewer claims that:

The points of the shears were stuck in the rim of a sieve, and two persons supported them with their finger-tips. Then a verse of the Bible was read aloud, and St. Peter and St. Paul were asked if it was A, B, or C (naming the persons suspected). When the right person was named, the sieve would suddenly turn round. 

The first image here will give you an idea of the fragility of the arrangement on which someone's guilt might rest.

Usefulness: 2 (Mainly as a synonym for a pointless, arcane ritual that confirms what everyone suspects. Elections, perhaps?)

Logofascination: 3 (I'm more fascinated by the weird and wonderful ways humans have sought for truth.)

Astragalomancy

Meaning: divination using the huckle-bones (a small bone around the ankle, I think) of sheep; apparently these days people have gone soft and use dice instead.

Usefulness: 3 (Unless you're on a sheep farm. Or in New Zealand.*)

Logofascination: 1 (The name comes from the Greek astragalus, their name for the bone, which also gives us astragaloid and astragalize, the latter meaning to play at dice.)

Sciomancy

Meaning: Cotgrave:

Divination by conference with the shadows of dead men. 

Usefulness: 2 (There's possibly a case to be made that reading authors long gone is 'conference with the shadows of dead men'.  Otherwise this word is probably only useful if you're writing a horror story, or reviewing The Sixth Sense.)

Logofascination: 2 (A specific form of necromancy, etymologically from the Greek for shade and shadows.  There's some suggestion that it can also mean divination by shadow - what shape yours casts, or the movement of shadows. I haven't found much to corroborate either way - what information I could find regarding sciomancy refers back to Rabelais, and I had no particular desire to go digging in the dark corners of the internet for the details of necromancy.)

Scatomancy

Meaning: divination by excremental examination. Wikipedia alleges that dung beetles were sometimes involved.

Usefulness: 2 (Examination of stool is sometimes necessary medical practice; the Bristol Stool Chart is merely a modern form of scatomancy. I suppose you could use it while reading tabloids: "Let's see what this week's scatomancy predicts for society.")

Logofascination: 1 (There really is a word for everything.)

Alectryomancy

Meaning: divination by rooster, usually by interpreting patterns in how they eat grain. Cotgrave:

Divination by a Cocke; or by the Cocke stone. 

Usefulness: 1 (If you can't make a joke out of that, you shouldn't be reading a blog featuring Rabelais. Otherwise I suspect it'd only be useful if you have roosters, unless you try the same technique with gulls or pigeons: you could assign pieces of bread certain values and see what order they were eaten in. "I tried alectryomancy* with gulls at the lake today; apparently you should look for a new job in February.")

Logofascination: 2 (From the Greek for cock. Also known as alectromancy.)

Onomatomancy

Meaning: divination by names, particularly by the letters in a given name (usually by assigning numbers to the letters).

Usefulness: 2 (I have a vague memory of doing this in primary school; I think there was a way you could do sums with your name and someone else's name and divine how well the whole thing would work. I'm not sure what that meant at 10 years old, but it was interesting.)

Logofascination: 1 (A bit obscure - even for this blog - but there is discussion in the OED citations and a few other places about whether this is onomancy or onomatomancy. A couple of citations suggest that onomancy means divination by ass, which is technically correct, but I think they're being sarcastic and mocking the user's lack of Latin. Some people take them seriously, however, but do not provide details on exactly how one would perform divination by donkey.)

Stichomancy

Meaning: divination by a randomly selecting a line from a text. The OED says:

Divination by lines of verse in books taken at hazard.

Hazard is of course being used to mean chance, although I like the idea that you have to consult a text while in danger.  Methods range from opening a book to a random page, balancing it on its spine and allowing it to fall open, and waiting for a book to fall onto the floor and seeing where it opens when you pick it up.

Usefulness: 1 (I've mentioned the sortes virgilianae before, and it would appear that where there is an important text of some kind, people will use it in this way. I've just tried it with Shakespeare's Complete Works* and got Richard II: "The wind sits fair for news to go to Ireland. But none returns." Make of that what you will.)

Logofascination: 1 (Sticho- is from the Greek stikhos which meant row, line or verse, and turns up in acrostic** and my new favourite word, stichology, the science or theory of metre in poetry.)

Anthropomancy

Meaning: divination by human entrails or human sacrifice, occasionally as a way of discovering how the gods felt about the sacrifice. This seems a bit rough on the sacrifice, particularly if rejected. The OED has one of its definitions-with-commentary:

Pretended divination by the entrails of men.

I'm not sure what genuine divination by entrails is called.

Usefulness: 2 (Symbolically, of course: "It wasn't an inquiry, it was anthropomancy - the minister gave him up to the masses to see which way the polls would go.")

Logofascination: 2

Cleromancy

Meaning: divination by lots; Rabelais refers to the tradition of the King cake, or galette des Rois, for Twelfth Night (Epiphany Eve, January 5 this year):

cheromancy,* as the bean is found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil.

Whover finds the bean in the cake is King for the night, or, presumably, Queen.** As ever, this comes with privileges - such as the ability to create arbitrary laws, (ala the Lord of Misrule); and responsibilities - in Sir Thomas’ example below, paying for the drinks.

Usefulness: 2 (Epiphany Eve is a Saturday this year, so all you need is to assemble some guests, source a galette des Rois, and decide what your Roy de la febve will be required to do. See also: paying for the drinks.)

Logofascination: 2 (The clero- is from Greek, and probably the same one that turns up in cleric.)

Sycomancy

Meaning: divination by fig leaf, or the right kind of sycamore. You can write options on a number of leaves, throw them to the wind and see which ones you find; or write something on a leaf and see how long it takes to dry (longer is good, so don't use this one if you're in a hurry); or make the leaves into tea and then interpret them as per your regular tea-leaf.

Usefulness: 2 (may depend on your proximity to fig trees, or need for a rhyme for sycophancy)

Logofascination: 1 (The syco- is from the Greek for fig, and is also in sycamore, as the Biblical sycamore was a fig tree. It looked a bit like a mulberry tree, so this fig-mulberry - sykon and moron in Greek - in turn gave its name to trees that looked a bit like it; its American cousin, a type of plane tree, and the European sycamore, which is actually a maple and not related at all. The fig-mulberry's species name is ficus sycomorus, or the figgy fig-mulberryish tree.  Syco- also turns up in sycophant, for slightly rude reasons explained over at etymonline.)

Choeromancy

Meaning: divination by pig entrail.

Usefulness: 2 (May depend on your interest in nose-to-tail eating. I've eaten some pig innards, deep fried - it seems I missed a chance to find a sign from the gods. Could also be used of pork belly, I suppose.)

Logofascination: 1 (This word is not even in wiktionary, but it is used - with variant spelling - by Rabelais, Sir Thomas and Frame. The etymology was hard to trace - it's from a Greek word for pig, or possibly hog, but most of our pig-words are old English, with a bit of Latin, so the Greek influence is minimal. )

Tephromancy

Meaning: divination by ashes.

Usefulness: 2 (I'm a little surprised no-one has yet used it regarding the Ashes, but I'd like to see it used on CSI or a show of that ilk*, while examining a fire or a cigarette butt: "Well," he drawled, removing his sunglasses, "it's clearly time for some... tephromancy." Cue dramatic music.)

Logofascination: 2 (Tephra is Greek for ash, and is the technical word for everything produced by a volcanic eruption.)