Onomancy
Onomancy or Onomatomantie (Greek / Neo-Latin) describes the prediction of the future ( divination or "mantic" ) of a name bearer from the numerical value of the name letters. The practice of fortune-telling from names goes back to Greek antiquity, the extension of this technique to the combination of letters and numbers comes from the Semitic-Arabic culture.
The oldest known German name mantics is preserved in a manuscript from the 14th century, which is ascribed to the Phisitor . Application found the onomancy for example, God's judgments , to predict the outcome to. It is also mentioned in the fencing books of the late Middle Ages ; Johannes Hartlieb wrote his "Ueber diehalt des Sieges" in 1434, in which all male first names are divided into "our women brothers" and "Sanct Jorgen brothers" and depending on this affiliation, happy or unhappy days are determined. Hans Talhoffer adopts this classification in his fencing book from 1443.
Its scientific counterpart is onomastics .
Fortune telling technique
The onomancy is based on the old technique of gematria , i. H. the idea that each letter of the alphabet represents a specific number. These numbers are calculated and the resulting value can then be looked up, for example, in a table that reveals whether luck or bad luck is to be expected.
Other names for divination made up of names and letters
Numerous other terms for divination from names or letters have been handed down from the high and late Middle Ages: "Literamantie" or "Grammatomantie" divination from letters and "Logarithmomancy" , divination from word numbers.
In the 17th century Hermann Rüdel summarized in his work De Characteromantia (dissertation Altdorf 1693) all forms of fortune-telling "which are practiced on the basis of" all kinds of signs, characters and letters " under the term " character romance " . Rüdel also included the use of magic words (such as abracadabra or the Sator-Arepo formula ), magic symbols such as the pentagram , the use of secret scripts or the Ars notoria, the art of memory.
Spodonomy
The term “Spodonomantie” (fortune telling from ashes ) probably goes back to Martin Anton Delrio (1551–1608) . He formed this term by combining the ancient term "Spodomantie" (from Greek σπο-δός "ash" and ὄνομα "name"), which is not concerned with names, and the term onomancy. In his work Disquisitionum Magicarum libri sex ..., which dealt with the superstitious ideas of his time, he referred to a form of ashes divination in which names were also involved. According to Delrio, the Spodonomantie is synonymous with the "Tephramantie" mentioned by Cardanus (1501–1576) (also ash prophecy ).
Martin Delrio tells of a custom from the second half of the 16th century, in which someone who wanted to learn something wrote it in the ashes with a stick or his finger and exposed it to a draft. Then one paid attention to the letters "which" showed themselves in the moving ashes ", which probably means that an oracle was made from the letters, which were not blurred by the draft."
Onomancy in Medicine
The medieval doctor Johannes von Mirfeld handed down a practice also called onomancy , which was supposed to be used to predict the outcome of an illness. The numerical values of the letters of the patient's name, the name of the person who was sent to the doctor, and the name of the day on which this messenger came to the doctor for the first time were added up. If the number was even, then the patient was certain to die; an odd number meant his recovery.
swell
- ↑ Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles: Chyromantie ac Physionomie Anastasis: cum approbatio [n] e magistri Alexa [n] dri d Achillinis. Bononia, Benedictis [printer] 1517.
- ↑ Kircher: Oedipvs Aegyptiacvs: Hoc Est Vniuersalis Hieroglyphicæ Veterum doctrinae temporum iniuria abolitæ Instavratio; Opus ex omni Orientalium doctrina & sapientia conditum, nec non viginti diuersarum linguarum authoritate stabilitum…. Rome 1652-1655.
- ^ Dominique Bouhours : Remarques ou reflexions. Amsterdam 1692; so the reference in the concise dictionary of German superstition.
- ↑ Article: Character Romance. In: Concise dictionary of German superstition . Published by Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli. Reprinted in Berlin, New York 1987.
- Jump up ↑ Martin Anton Delrio: Disquisitionum Magicarum libri sex, quibus continetur accurata curiosarum artium, et vanarum superstitionum confutatio, utilis Theologis, Iurisconsultis, Medicis, Philologis. Mainz, Henning 1603.
- ↑ Spodonomantie. In: Concise dictionary of German superstition. Published by Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli. Reprinted in Berlin, New York 1987.
- ↑ Richard Kieckhefer: Magic in the Middle Ages. Munich 1995, page 106.
literature
- Franz Dornseiff: fortune telling from the numerical values of names. In: Franz Dornseiff: The alphabet in mysticism and magic. Leipzig, Berlin 1925, pages 113–118.
- Gerhard Eis: Phisitors Onomatomantia. In: fortune telling texts of the late Middle Ages. Berlin 1956 pages 13-16
- Gerhard Eis: "Pythagoras" Onomatomantia. In: Journal for German Philology. Volume 76, Issue 3/1957, Pages 305-307.
- Gerhard Eis: Problems of Medieval Onomatomancy. In: Atti e Memorie del VII Congresso Internazionale dei Scienze Onomastiche. Volume 3, Florence 1961, pp. 153-159.
- Richard Kieckhefer : Magic in the Middle Ages. Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-04651-1 .
- Christa Tuczay : Magic and Magician in the Middle Ages. Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-34017-7 .