Useless Facts on Magic And the Occult
Bobbing for apples at Halloween originated as part of a divination technique practiced by the Druids. Participants floated apples in a tub of water on the 31st of October (the Druid New Year's Eve) and attempted to fish them out without using their hands. Those who succeeded were guaranteed a prosperous year.
The Three Kings of the Nativity story were actually sorcerers. They were magicians, priests of the Zoroastrain religion of Persia. The word “magi” (as in the Three Magi) is the plural of magus, meaning “wizard” in Old Persian. It is from this root that the word “magic” is derived.
Magical symbols drawn by Roman soldiers on shields to repel the evil eye became the basis for European heraldic designs during the Middle Ages.
Some occult tongue-twisters:
- Alextoromantia: Divination based on the direction in which a rooster turns when let loose in a circle.
- Alextryomancy: Divination by reading the random configurations formed by scattering grains of wheat on the ground.
- Amniomancy: Foretelling a child's future from the arrangement of the amniotic membrane at the child's birth.
- Arithomancy: Divination by abstruse and secret numerical calculations.
- Belomancy: Divination by reading the flight patterns of randomly shot arrows and their position when they land.
- Cereoscopy: Interpreting the patterns made by wax melted in boiling water.
- Cledonism: Finding omens in the first words one hears upon rising in the morning.
- Hydroscopy: Divination by reading the ripples created by three stones tossed into a pond.
- Kieidiscopy: Divination by reading the undulations of a key swinging on a string.
- Lycanthropy: The study of werewolves.
- Metoposcopy: Divination by reading the positions, shapes, and sizes of the moles or blemishes on a person's body.
- Ornithomancy: Divination by reading the flight patterns of birds.
- Pyromancy: Divination by reading the movements of flame.
- Rhabdomancy: Hunting for gold, water, or precious metals by using a hazel wand as a pointer.
- Scapulomancy: Divination by reading the cracks and fissures in the roasted shoulder bones of a sheep.
- Screeology: The art of reading the future in a crystal ball.