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Rhabdomancy is a divination technique which involves the use of any rod, wand, staff, stick, arrow, or the like. One method of rhabdomancy was setting a number of staffs on end and observing where they fall, to divine the direction one should travel, or to find answers to certain questions.〔N. Homes, ''Daemonologie and Theologie'' 1650, viii. p.80〕〔Brand, ''Popular Antiquities'' 1844, iii. p.332〕 It has also been used for divination by arrows (which have wooden shafts) - otherwise known as belomancy.〔Howitt trans. Ennemoser ''The History of Magic'' 1893, ii. p.460〕 Less commonly it has been assigned to the I Ching, which traditionally uses a bundle of yarrow shoots,〔J. Thomson trans. Cornelius Pauw. ''Philosophical Dissertations on the Egyptians and Chinese.'' London: T. Chapman, 1795. II. 164.〕 and also dowsing, which often uses a wooden stick.〔Thomas Gamaliel Bradford. ''Encyclopædia Americana'' Desilver, Thomas, & Co., 1835. XI. p.8.〕〔Gaynor (ed.) ''Dictionary of Mysticism'' 1953 (1974) p.155〕 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.〔J.S. Forsyth. ''Demonologia; or, Natural knowledge revealed.'' London, John Bumpus, 1827. p.156〕〔''Encyclopaedia Britannica'' (3rd ed.) 1797, vol. VII p.67〕〔Cheyne & Black, ''Encyclopædia Biblica'' 1899, i. 1117/1〕 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.〔Thomas Browne, ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'' (2nd ed.) 1650, p.232.〕〔Howitt trans. Ennemoser ''The History of Magic'' 1893, ii. p.460〕 Numbers 17 has also been attributed to rhabdomancy.〔Lock trans. de Givry, ''Picture Museum of Sorcery'' 1931 (1963) viii. 311〕 W.F. Kirby, an English translator of the Kalevala, notes that in Runo 49, Väinämöinen uses rhabdomancy, or divination by rods, to learn where the sun and moon are hidden, but this interpretation is rejected by Aili Kolehmainen Johnson (1950). ==Etymology== The word first appears in English in the mid-17th century (used in Thomas Browne's ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'', 1646), where it is an adaptation of Late Latin ''rhabdomantia'', from a presumed (unrecorded) ancient Greek '' *rhabdomanteia'', from the ancient Greek ῥαβδος (''rhabdos'') a rod. Liddell & Scott are "dubious" about the word's existence in Classical Greek, though the word is well attested in Patristic Greek. Note that none of the divinatory practices denoted by ''rhabdomancy'' in English are documented from ancient Greece sources. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rhabdomancy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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