(1) Gaule, in his "Mag-astromancers posed and puzzel'd,” p. 192, enquires "whether pericepts, Amulets, præfiscinals, phylacteries, niceteries, ligatures, suspensions, Charms, and spels, had ever been used, applyed, or carryed about, but for magick and astrologie? Their supposed efficacy (in curing diseases and preventing of perils) being taught from their fabrication, configuration, and confection, under such and such sydereal aspects, conjunctions, constellations." His preceding observations upon Alchymy are too pointed and sensible not to be retained: "Whether alchymie (that enticing yet nice harlot) had made so many fooles and beggars, had she not clothed or painted herself with such astrological phrases and magical practises? But I let this kitchen magick or chimney astrology passe. The sweltering drudges and smoaky scullions of it (if they may not bring in new fuel to the fire) are soon taught (by their past observed folly) to ominate their own late repentance. But, if they will obstinately persist, in hope to sell their smoak, let others beware how they buy it too dear.'

66

Lupton, in his fourth Book of "Notable Things," (edit. 8vo. 1660, p. 92,) 41, says: a piece of a child's navell string, borne in a ring, is good against the falling sickness, the pain of the head, and the collick. Miz."

Park, in his "Travels in the Interior of Africa," speaking of a Mahometan negro, who, with the ceremonial part of that religion, retained all his ancient superstition, says that, "in the midst of a dark wood he made a sign for the company to stop, and, taking hold of an hollow piece of bamboo that hung as an Amulet round his neck, whistled very loud three times this, he said, was to ascertain what success would attend the journey. He then dismounted, laid his spear across the road, and having said a number of short prayers, concluded with three loud Whistles; after which he listened for some time, as if in expectation of an answer, and receiving none, said, the company might proceed without fear, as there was no danger.'

by fire; Hydromancy, by water; (1) Geomancy, by earth; Theomancy, pretending to divine by the revelation of the Spirit, and by the Scriptures, or word of God; Dæmonomancy, by the suggestions of evill dæmons or devils; Idolomancy, by idolls, images, figures; Psychomancy, by men's souls, affections, wills, religious or morall dispositions; Antinopomancy, by the entrails of men, women, and children; Theriomancy, by beasts; Ornithomancy, by birds; Ichthyomancy, by fishes; Botanomancy, by herbs; Lithomancy, by stones; Cleromancy, by lotts; Oniromancy, by dreams; Onomatomancy, by names; Arithmancy, by numbers; Logarithmancy, by logarithmes; Sternomancy, from the breast to the belly; Gastromancy, by the sound of, or signes upon the belly; Omphelomancy, by the navel; Chiromancy, by the hands; Padomancy, by the feet; Onychomancy, by the nayles; Cephaleonomancy, by brayling of an asses head; Tuphramancy, by ashes; Capnomancy, by smoak; Livanomancy, by burning of frankincense; Carramancy, by melting of wax; Lecanomancy, by a basin of

water; Catoxtromancy, by looking-glasses; Chartomancy, by writing in papers;" (this is retained in chusing Valentines, &c.) “Macharomancy, by knives or swords; Chrystallomancy, by glasses; Dactylomancy, by rings; Coseinomancy, by sieves; Axinomancy, by sawes; Cattabomancy, by vessels of brasse or other metall; Roadomancy, by starres; Spatalamancy, by skins, bones, excrements; Scyomancy, by shadows; Astragalomancy, by dice; Oinomancy, by wine; Sycomancy, by figgs; Typomancy, by the coagulation of cheese; Alphitomancy, by meal, flower, or branne; Crithomancy, by grain or corn; Alectromancy, by cocks or pullen; Gyromancy, by rounds or circles; Lampadomancy, by candles and lamps; and in one word for all, Nagomancy, or Necromancy, by inspecting, consulting, and divining by, with, or from the dead." (2)

In Holiday's "TEXNOTAMIA, or the Marriage of the Arts," 4to. signat. G, is introduced a species of Divination not in the above ample list of them, entitled. " Anthropomancie."

(2) There were among the ancients Divinations by water, fire, earth, air; by the flight of birds, by lots, by dreams, by the wind, &c.

I suppose the following species of Divination must be considered as a vestige of the ancient Hydromancy. An essayist in the "Gent. Mag." for March, 1731, vol. i. p. 110, introduces "a person surprising a lady and her company in close cabal over their coffee; the rest very intent upon one, who by her dress and intelligence he guessed was a tire-woman; to whom she added the secret of divining by coffee-grounds: she was then in full inspiration, and with much solemnity observing the atoms round the cup on one hand sat a widow, on the other a maiden lady, both attentive to the predictions to be given of their future fate. The lady (his acquaintance), though marryed, was no less earnest in contemplating her cup than the other two. They assured him that every cast of the cup

is a picture of all one's life to come; and every transaction and circumstance is delineated with the exactest certainty." From the "Weekly Register," March 20, No. xc.

The same practice is noticed in the "Connoisseur," No. 56, where a girl is represented divining to find out of what rank her husband shall be: "I have seen him several times in coffee-grounds, with a sword by his side; and he was once at the bottom of a tea-cup in a coach and six with two footmen behind it."

To the Divination by Water also must be referred the following passage in a list of superstitious practices preserved in the "Life of Harvey, the famous Conjurer of Dublin," 8vo. Dubl. 1728, p. 58: "Immersion of wooden bowls in water, sinking incharmed and inchanted Amulets under water, or burying them under a stone in a grave in a churchyard."

Among Love Divinations (of which see

vol. i. p. 209, under ALLHALLOW EVEN,) may be reckoned the dumb cake, so called because it was to be made without speaking, and afterwards the parties were to go backwards up the stairs to bed, and put the cake under their pillows, when they were to dream of their lovers. See Strutt's "Manners and

Customs," vol. iii. p. 180. For "Knot Divinations," see p. 41.

(2) See a prodigious variety of these Divinations, alphabetically enumerated and explained, in "Fabricii Bibliographia Antiquaria," cap. xii. Consult also "Potter's Greek Antiq." vol. i. p. 348, et seq.

We read the following in the "Gent. Mag." for September, 1734, vol. iv. p. 488, from Bayle: "There's no prescribing against truth from universal tradition, or the general consent of mankind; because, so we must receive all the superstitions the Roman people borrowed from the Tuscans, in the matter of augury, prodigy, and all the pagan imperti

nencies in the point of Divination as incontestible truths."

John of Salisbury enumerates no fewer than thirteen different kinds of Diviners or fortunetellers, who (in his time) pretended to foretell future events, some by one means and some by another. "De Nugis Curialium," lib. i. c. 12, p. 36.

Divination by arrows, says Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall," vol. x. p. 345, is ancient, and famous in the East.

The following compendious new way of magical Divination, which we find so humourously described in Butler's "Hudibras," as follows, is affirmed by Monsieur Le Blanc, in his Travels, to be used in the East Indies:

"Your modern Indian magician

Makes but a hole in th' earth to pisse in, And straight resolves all questions by't, And seldom fails to be i' th' right."

DIVINATION by the Rod, or Wand, is mentioned in the prophecy of Ezekiel. Hosea too reproaches the Jews as being infected with the like superstition: "My people ask counsel at their Stocks, and their STAFF declareth unto them." Chap. iv. 12. (1)

The vulgar notion, still prevalent in the north of England, of the hazel's tendency to a vein of lead ore, seam or stratum of coal, &c., seems to be a vestige of this Rod Divination.

The Virgula divina, or Baculus divinatorius, is a forked branch in the form of a Y, cut off an hazel stick, by means whereof people have pretended to discover mines, springs, &c. underground. The method of using it is this: the person who bears it, walking very slowly over the places where he suspects mines or springs may be, the effluvia exhaling from the metals, or vapour from the water impregnating the wood, makes it dip, or incline, which is the sign of a discovery.(a)

(a) See the Scottish Encyclopædia.

The

In the "Living Library, or Historicall Meditations," fol. 1621, p. 283, we read: "No man can tell why forked sticks of hazill (rather than sticks of other trees growing upon the very same places) are fit to shew the places where the veines of gold and silver are. sticke bending itselfe in the places, at the bottome, where the same veines are." See Lilly's "History of his Life and Times," p. 32, for a curious experiment (which he confesses however to have failed) to discover hidden treasure by the hazel-rod (2).

With the Divining Rod seems connected a Lusus Naturæ of ash-tree bough, resembling the Litui of the Roman augurs and the Christian pastoral Staff, which still obtains a place, if not on this account I know not why, in the catalogue of popular superstitions. Seven or eight years ago I remember to have seen one of these, which I thought extremely beautiful and curious, in the house of an old woman at Beer Alston, in Devonshire, of whom I would

most gladly have purchased it; but she declined parting with it on any account, thinking it would be unlucky to do so. The late Mr. Gostling, in the "Antiquarian Repertory," vol. ii. p. 164, has some observations on this subject. He thinks the Lituus, or Staff, with the crook at one end, which the augurs of old carried as badges of their profession, and instruments in the superstitious exercise of it, was not made of metal, but of the substance abovementioned. Whether, says he, to call it a work of art, or nature, may be doubted: some were probably of the former kind others, Hogarth, in his "Analysis of Beauty," calls Lusus Naturæ, found in plants of different sorts, and, in one of the plates to that work, gives a specimen of a very elegant one, a branch of ash. I should rather, continues he, style it a distemper, or distortion of nature; for it seems the effect of a wound

by some insect, which piercing to the heart of the plant with its proboscis, poisons that, while the bark remains uninjured, and proceeds in its growth, but formed into various stripes, flatness, and curves, for want of the support which nature designed it. The beauty some of these arrive at might well consecrate them to the mysterious fopperies of heathenism, and their rarity occasion imitations of them by art. The pastoral Staff of the church of Rome seems to have been formed from the vegetable Litui, (b) though the general idea is, I know, that it is an imitation of the Shepherd's Crook. The engravings given in the "Antiquarian Repertory" are of carved branches of the ash.

(b) Moresin, in his "Papatus," p. 126, says, Pedum Episcopale est Litius Augurum, de quo Livius, i."

(1) Not only the Chaldeans used Rods for Divination, but almost every nation which has pretended to that science has practised the same method. Herodotus mentions it as a custom of the Alani; and Tacitus of the old Germans. See Mr. Cambridge's "Scribleriad," book v. note on line 21.

I find the following on this subject in "Bartholini Causæ contemptæ a Danis Mortis," p. 676: "Virgis Salignis divinasse Scythas, indicat libro quarto Herodotus, eamque fuisse illis traditam a majoribus divinationem. Et de Alanis, Scytharum gente, idem memorat Ammianus Marcellinus: futura miro præsagiunt modo: nam rectiores virgas vimineas colligentes, easque cum Incantamentis quibusdam secretis præstituto tempore discernentes, aperte quid portendatur norunt.'"

In the Manuscript "Discourse on Witchcraft," 1705, written by Mr. John Bell, p. 41, I find the following account from Theophy lact on the subject of Rabdomanteia, or Rod Divination. "They set up two Staffs; and having whispered some verses and incantations, the Staffs fell by the operation of dæ

mons.

Then they considered which way each of them fell, forward or backward, to the right or left hand, and agreeably gave responses, having made use of the fall of their Staffs for their sigus."

Dr. Henry, in his "History of Great Britain," tells us, vol. ii. p. 550, that "after the Anglo-Saxons and Danes embraced the Christian religion, the clergy were commanded by the canons to preach very frequently against Diviners, sorcerers, auguries, omens, charms, incantations, and all the filth of the wicked and dotages of the Gentiles.". He cites Johnson's "Eccles. Canons," A. D. 747, c. 3.

The following is from Epigrams, &c., by S. Sheppard, Lond. 1651, lib. vi., Epigr. 1. p. 141.

"Virgula divina.

"Some sorcerers do boast they have a Rod,
Gather'd with vowes and sacrifice,
And (borne about) will strangely nod
To hidden treasure where it lies:
Mankind is (sure) that Rod divine,
For to the wealthiest (ever) they incline."

In the "Gent. Mag." for Feb. 1752, vol. xxii. p. 77, we read: "M. Linnæus, when he was upon his voyage to Scania, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his Divining Wand, was willing to convince him of its insufficiency, and for that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus, which grew by itself in a meadow, and bid the secretary find it if he could. The Wand discovered nothing, and M. Linnæus' mark was soon trampled down by the company who were present; so that when M. Linnæus went to finish the experiment by fetching the gold himself, he was utterly at a loss where to seek it. The man with the Wand assisted him, and pronounced that it could not lie the way they were going, but quite the contrary: so pursued the direction of his Wand, and actually dug out the gold. M. Linnæus adds, that such another experiment would be sufficient to make a proselyte of him.”

We read, in the same work, for Nov. 1751, vol. xxi. p. 507, "So early as Agricola the Divining Rod was in much request, and has obtained great credit for its discovery where to dig for metals and springs of water: for some years past its reputation has been on the decline, but lately it has been revived with great success by an ingenious gentleman, who, from numerous experiments hath good reason to believe its effects to be more than imagination. He says, that hazel and willow rods, he has by experience found, will actually answer with all persons in a good state of

health if they are used with moderation and at some distance of time, and after meals, when the operator is in good spirits. The hazel, willow, and elm, are all attracted by springs of water: some persons have the virtue intermittently; the rod, in their hands, will attract one half hour, and repel the next. The rod is attracted by all metals, coals, amber, and lime-stone, but with different degrees of strength. The best Rods are those from the hazel, or nut-tree, as they are pliant and tough, and cut in the winter months. A shoot that terminates equally forked is to be met with, two single ones, of a length and size, may be tied together with a thread, and will answer as well as the other."

In the Supplement to the "Athenian Oracle," p. 234, we read, that "the experiment of a hazel's tendency to a vein of lead ore is limited to St. John Baptist's Eve, and that with an hazel of that same year's growth."

There is a Treatise in French, entitled "La Physique occulte, ou Traité de la Baguette divinatoire, et de son utilité pour la decouverte des Sources d'Eau des Minieres, de Tresors cachez, des Voleurs, & des Meurtriers fugitifs: par M. L.L. de Vallemont, pretre & docteur en Theologie," 12mo. Amst. 1693, 464 pages.

At the end of Henry Alan's edition of Cicero's Treatises "de Divinatione," and "de Fato," 8vo. Lond. 1839, will be found" Catalogus Auctorum de Divinatione ac Fato, de Oraculis, de Somniis, de Astrologia, de Dæmonibus, de Magia, id genus Aliis."