The future via haruspicy

August 11, 2006 8:17 AM

Need to know the future? Try a little haruspicy. Full details, including a script in Greek, here (don't worry, they use an egg). For the animal rights activist, there's a cruelty-free method.
posted by JanetLand (16 comments total)

and more divination types in wikipedia, some are pretty weird.
posted by milovoo at 8:33 AM on August 11, 2006

I don't get the last link - it's based on looking at a liver. How are you supposed to get the liver out? Or are they using liver to mean something other than, uh, a liver?
posted by GuyZero at 8:42 AM on August 11, 2006

Er... yeah. I wrote my classics BA dissertation on animal based divination methods like haruspicy, augury and the like. Reading omens in offal was most definitely not a cruelty free method. Is the guy proposing use of x-rays or something?
posted by bifter at 8:46 AM on August 11, 2006

A convenient period guide to haruspicy of course exists in the form of the piacenza liver. Handy if anyone is planning to make like a homebrewed haruspex...
posted by bifter at 8:49 AM on August 11, 2006

I think you're supposed to deal the cards out that come with the book, using them like tarot cards.
posted by JanetLand at 8:49 AM on August 11, 2006

posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:52 AM on August 11, 2006

milovoo: Why oh why do people slag off Wikipedia? That list is brilliant.
posted by reklaw at 9:00 AM on August 11, 2006

Haruspicy is also the Word of the Day at wordsmith.org today.
posted by hsoltz at 9:01 AM on August 11, 2006

I think you're supposed to deal the cards out that come with the book, using them like tarot cards.

Hm... I can see some serious divine displeasure with that scam. Ducking lightning bolts left, right and centre...
posted by bifter at 9:05 AM on August 11, 2006

Or you have the time machine of http://halfpasthuman.com/ that uses the text of the internet to predict the future. You get more material than using offal that way.
posted by rough ashlar at 9:11 AM on August 11, 2006

GuyZero, the second picture in the last link of the post makes it pretty obvious, the locations of fatty spots and blood vessels are interpreted in a traditional way to mean various things. It's just like a magic 8-ball only with more gore.

milovoo: Why oh why do people slag off Wikipedia? That list is brilliant.

I don't know either, but since I've been editing it for a few years and have a great respect for the idea, I just tend not to listen to those people. It's usually just mainstream-media-hype-of-the-week anyway. i.e. "OMG, someone posted something that's wrong, and now it's there forever, we should never use wikipedia again!"
posted by milovoo at 9:18 AM on August 11, 2006

I had interpreted as reference material for a traditional haruspicy, rather than cards that get cut apart and dealt out.
posted by GuyZero at 9:28 AM on August 11, 2006

Haruspection? Haruspectator?
posted by clockzero at 9:46 AM on August 11, 2006

JanetLand, Way cool post! Thank you.

I, Claudius is one of my favorite BBC series. It's all about the wacko descendants and family of Caesar Augustus (Livia the poisoner, nutso Caligula and Nero et alia). But I never knew how the haruspicy (sounds like a Japanese-American condiment) thing worked.

The Tibetans have a system of divination, called "mo". Usually their mala (Sanscrit for the Tibetan "treng-nga"= rosary beads) is used. There's a site that teaches how to do a mo. And a book.

At the bottom of the page on your first link is one to people reading Roman poetry. Having had to study Caesar's Gallic Wars and Virgil's Aeneid in school, it's wonderful to hear Latin verse read in clips at Viva Voce.
posted by nickyskye at 11:50 AM on August 11, 2006

I'll stick to pigeon augury. Someone with the skills and time should do an augury fortune generator like facade.com does with tarot, runes, I ching and such. Though I guess animated sheep guts would be even more entertaining.
posted by eegphalanges at 2:36 PM on August 11, 2006

posted by cenoxo at 3:39 PM on August 11, 2006