Divination In The Middle Ages

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Divination is the same thing as fortune telling. Divination was popular in Europe during the medieval times. There were many different methods of divination in the middle ages. They could tell the future by looking at the spots on livers of animals, casting lots (dice made out of animal bones), or looking at how birds fly, which is known as augury. They also often relied on the position of stars. Some other things they used were basic math facts, educated guesses, or the way the sky looked. The instructions to do these can be long, and sometimes they might require as many as 9 masses to be said before you can do any type of foretelling.

In the middle ages, there were a lot of superstitions and there was a lot of belief in supernatural forces or powers. Most things that …show more content…

Some more forms of divination are: chiromancy or palmistry, and onomancy.

Scrying, where you tell a future from a globe ball, remained popular too, but were much more likely to draw he church’s suspicion if a practitioner didn’t have a powerful patron.

Physiognomy is the study of the similarities of psychological traits by facial features or body structure. It was paid attention to people who considered it both a way of telling apart a person/personality by appearance and as a method of divination. Physiognomy was ancient. It had literature in ancient and medieval times. It was also related to Astrology and other forms of divination. The idea of the subject was in the literature of the Middle Ages. Physiognomy formed part of the most ancient philosophy.

The earliest known systematic essay on physiognomy is written by Aristotle. He devoted 6 chapters to consideration of the method of study. Some things he talked about are general signs of character, appearance, strength, and smartness. He examined the characters gained from these features and also from color, hair, body, limbs, how a person walks, and their

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