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Sunday for Monday

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Sunday for Monday

#1

Sunday for Monday

This is the English language term for the use of wooden spears and or arrows to determine the course of military activity. The method was used by the Greeks, Scythians, Assyrians, Arabs and Babylonians. It was also use by the Slovakians and some northern tribes.

"For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways,� he shakes the arrows, he consults the household idols, he looks at the liver."

It is related in method to forms of the I Ching but likely much less complicated to perform. Tacticus the prolific Roman historian writes of its use by the Germanic tribes but obviously did not use the terminology I'm asking for.

It developed by putting messages, signs, numbers, or symbols on arrows/spears and either shooting (throwing) them for distance, or accuracy, simply letting them fall to the ground, or drawing them blindly out of a quiver. What the message on the selected item said to do, was taken as an omen and they did what it said to do.

What is the term/word?

Re: Sunday for Monday

#2

Monday answer

The word was relatively easy to discover with the clues in the question, but if the term was not immediately known - it is, after all, obscure - did require a search. No takers today. Still, it will be a nice word to drop at the next family gathering. Should the steak be rare or well done? Hot dog, ribs, or hamburger? Decide by marking wood skewers!

I would have accepted two terms-belomancy, and rhabdomancy, or even divination in a pinch. Rhabdomancy is using ANY stick, rod, pole or similar to determine a direction or guiding the diviner to proceed -- not unlike a chance granted by a game of spin the bottle. Belomancy, also bolomancy, is the ancient art of divination by use of arrows. It was as described in the question. As stated earlier, belomancy was anciently practised at least by Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs and Scythians.

E. Cobham Brewer 1810�1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.

Divination by arrows. Labels being attached to a given number of arrows, the archers let them fly, and the advice on the label of the arrow which flies farthest is accepted and acted on. This practice is common with the Arabs.

A lost traveller might also use belomancy to find his way, by tossing the arrow into the air, and when it came to rest letting its angle show him the way.

Via Wikipedia.

Rhabdomancy has been used in reference to a number of Biblical verses. St Jerome connected Hosea 4.12, which reads "My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them" (KJV), to Ancient Greek rhabdomantic practices Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, notes that Ezekiel 21.21 describes the divination by arrows of Nebuchadnezzar II as rhabdomancy, though this can also be termed belomancy because of the arrow reference.

English word from Greek-- belos, an arrow, dart. -mancy suffix for divination.

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