Anthropomancy

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The Anthropomantie was allegedly in the ancient practice method of divination in which killed people the body was cut open from the bowels of the inside of the body and the future to read. It is said to have been practiced mainly in the Roman Empire , with the Greeks and in ancient Egypt , although ancient Egypt , for example, had no intestinal inspection. It is not to be equated with the concept of human sacrifice and is not an ancient term either, but a humanistic new formation based on mostly late and post-ancient evidence, based on novel-like embellishments by earlier authors such as Lukan or the satires of Juvenal .

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Anthropomanty is described in literature as the most inhuman and hideous variant of divination. "According to a legend, the magician-emperor Julian" the renegade "is said to have sacrificed several children during his fortune-telling rituals to inspect their entrails". It was assigned to the term Goëtie by Georg Pictorius and referred to as a magical practice that was regarded as unnatural, forbidden or diabolical.

Practices

In ancient times, not only wizards and witches were associated with anthropomanty, but also, for example, the Roman emperors Elagabal (204–222) and Julian (331–363) by their opponents . The partly openly Christian - Theodoret zu Julian -, partly confused - such as the Historia Augusta zu Elagabal, which originated around AD 400 - reported that they had children and young women killed in nightly rituals in order to avoid the future to research or to foresee the outcome of campaigns . There have also been reports of practices among the Lusitanians , Phoenicians, and Punic who are also believed to have adopted this custom. Arab writers have reported that the heranischen Sabians were used sacrificed people for divination heads. According to reports, "the body was soaked in oil and borax until the muscles and joints softened so that the head could be separated from the torso by simply pulling it on ." At the time of Theophilos of Alexandria († 412), in the " Adyton of the Temple of Serapis, chopped off children's heads with gilded lips were used for divinatory purposes". The inhabitants of ancient Lusitania are said to have been devoted to this superstition .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Andreas Resch : Anthropomantie (English Anthropomancy) ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.igw-resch-verlag.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Institute for Frontier Areas of Science
  2. ↑ Anthropomancy. In: Association of German associations for folklore (Hrsg.): Concise dictionary of German superstition. Volume 1: Eel - Butzemann . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Leipzig 1927, column 471 f. ( online ).