zoomancy

zoomancy

English

Etymology

zoo- +‎ -mancy

Noun

zoomancy (uncountable)

1. divination by means of animals
   • 1888, H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, The Theosophical Publishing Company, Limited (1888), pages 362-363:

     Yet why should so many generations have believed in divination by birds, and even in zoomancy, said by Suidas to have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how to perceive in the yoke and white of the egg, under certain conditions, that which the bird born from it would have seen around it during its short life.

   • 1994, Michael David Cooperson, The Heirs of the Prophets in Classical Arabic Biography, page 207:

     The speech takes the form of a zoomancy, with no act of zoomancy in evidence.

   • 2004, Marc Kalinowski, "Technical Traditions in Ancient China and Shushu Culture in Chinese Religion", in Religion and Chinese Society (ed. John Lagerwey), Chinese University Press (2006), →ISBN, page 224:

     […] these are mainly writings of a technical nature: scribes' registers on ritual divination by turtle and milfoil, calendars, manuals of hemerology, astrology, meteoromancy and Yijing divination, treatises on medicine, macrobiotics, and zoomancy.