Crossword clues for rhabdomancy
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Rabdomancy \Rab"do*man`cy\ (r[a^]b"d[-o]*m[a^]n`s[y^]), n. [Gr.
"ra`bdos rod + -mancy.]
Divination by means of rods or wands. [Written also
rhabdomancy.]
--Sir T. Browne.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1640s, "use of divining rod" (especially to discover ores or underground water), from Greek rhabdos "rod, wand; magic wand; fishing rod; spear-shaft; a staff of office; a rod for chastisement; twig, stick" + manteia "divination, oracle" (see -mancy). Greek rhabdos is from PIE *wer-, base of roots meaning "to turn, bend" (cognates: Lithuanian virbas "twig, branch, scion, rod," Latin verbena "leaves and branches of laurel"); see warp (v.); the Greek noun was used to represent Roman fasces. Related: Rhabdomantic
Wiktionary
n. divination with a wand or rod; dowsing.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Rhabdomancy is a divination technique which involves the use of any rod, wand, 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. Less commonly it has been assigned to the I Ching, which traditionally uses a bundle of yarrow shoots, and also dowsing, which often uses a wooden stick.
Rhabdomancy has been used in reference to a number of Biblical verses. St Jerome 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, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, notes that Ezekiel 21.21 describes the divination by arrows of Nebuchadnezzar II 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, notes that in Runo 49, Väinämöinen 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).
Usage examples of "rhabdomancy".
The form most often performed by the Department was rhabdomancy, or dowsing, used to find lost property or to find the best place for the site of a house or to locate a hidden spring.
The LXX, Ezechiel xxi, 21, reads , not , and rhabdomancy is mentioned by S.
I refer to such organic forces as are popularly summed up under the words clairvoyance, mesmerism, rhabdomancy, animal magnetism, physical spiritualism.