Rhabdomancy is a

divination Divination () is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a should proceed by reading signs, ...

technique which involves the use of any rod,

wand A wand is a thin, light-weight rod that is held with one hand, and is traditionally made of wood, but may also be made of other materials, such as metal, bone or stone. Long versions of wands are often styled in forms of staves or sceptres, whi ...

, staff, stick, arrow, or the like. One method of rhabdomancy was setting a number of staffs on end and observing where they fall, to divine the direction one should travel, or to find answers to certain questions. It has also been used for divination by arrows (which have wooden shafts) - otherwise known as

belomancy Belomancy, also bolomancy, is the ancient art of divination by use of arrows. The word is built upon , and , , 'divination'. Belomancy was anciently practiced at least by Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs and Scythians. The arrows were typically marked ...

. Less commonly it has been assigned to the

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yijing'' ( ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The ''I Ching'' was originally a divination manual in ...

, which traditionally uses a bundle of yarrow shoots. Another type of rhabdomancy is

dowsing Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, Petroleum, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active do ...

in its traditional form of using a wooden stick, usually forked. Rhabdomancy has been used in reference to a number of Biblical verses.

St Jerome Jerome (; ; ; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian priest, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. He is best known for his translation of the Bible i ...

connected Hosea 4:12, which reads "My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them" (KJV), to Ancient Greek rhabdomantic practices.

Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a d ...

, in his ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'', notes that Ezekiel 21:21 describes the divination by arrows of

Nebuchadnezzar II Nebuchadnezzar II, also Nebuchadrezzar II, meaning "Nabu, watch over my heir", was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from the death of his father Nabopolassar in 605 BC to his own death in 562 BC. Often titled Nebuchadnezzar ...

as rhabdomancy, though this can also be termed belomancy. Numbers 17 has also been attributed to rhabdomancy. W. F. Kirby, an English translator of the

Kalevala The ''Kalevala'' () is a 19th-century compilation of epic poetry, compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling a story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory ...

, notes that in Runo 49,

Väinämöinen () is a deity, demigod, hero and the central character in Finnish folklore and the main character in the national epic ''Kalevala'' by Elias Lönnrot. Väinämöinen was described as an old and wise man, and he possessed a potent, magical sing ...

uses rhabdomancy, or divination by rods, to learn where the Sun and Moon are hidden, but this interpretation is rejected by Aili Kolehmainen Johnson (1950).

Etymology

The word first appears in English in the mid-17th century (used in

's ''

Pseudodoxia Epidemica ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or, Enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths'', also known simply as ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'' or ''Vulgar Errors'', is a work by the English polymath Thomas Browne, challenging and refuti ...

'', 1646), where it is an adaptation of

Late Latin Late Latin is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the 3rd to 6th centuries CE, and continuing into the 7th century in ...

''rhabdomantia'', from a presumed (unrecorded) ancient Greek ''*rhabdomanteia'', from the ancient Greek ῥάβδος (''rhabdos'') a rod.

Liddell & Scott Liddell is a surname. Notable people with this name, also Lidell, include: * Alan Liddell (1930–1972), English cricketer, son of Allan Liddell * Alice Liddell (1852–1934), Lewis Carroll's "muse" * Allan Liddell (1908–1970), English cricke ...

are "dubious" about the word's existence in Classical Greek, though the word is well attested in Patristic Greek. Note that none of the divinatory practices denoted by ''rhabdomancy'' in English are documented from ancient Greek sources.

References

{{Divination Divination