Plastromancy
This interesting, too-short article about newly-discovered most-ancient-ever writing in China (or what looks like it), finally jogged my memory for a word I’d been trying to remember in connection with a post of ezrakilty’s.
Id est, plastromancy, the Shang dynasty practice of using cracks in heated turtle shells for divination.
Here is a pretty comprehensive list of types of divination. These are the sorts of words people just make up from Latin and Greek roots – many of them, including plastromancy, don’t even make it into the OED!
Which makes me wonder – is there another word for this turtle-shell divination? I thought I had successfully looked up the word before, in a book, but if plastromancy is the one I’m trying to remember then this can’t have happened. All I can think of is “tortugamancy”, which is funny but wrong.
May 9th, 2003 at 4:44 pm
SCAPULIMANCY and PYROSCAPULIMANCY: http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/ShangDivination.htm
is that them?
turns out it’s all part of the I Ching, precursor to the yarrow stalks and coins used later.
May 9th, 2003 at 5:23 pm
Yeah, that must be it. I guess I must’ve read about it in something related to the I Ching…
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