thumb|An individual practicing spodomancy by making marks in ashes. The marks are then interpreted for meaning, omens, and portents.

Spodomancy (also known as tephramancy and tephromancy) is a form of divination by examining cinders, soot, or ashes (), particularly although not exclusively from a ritual sacrifice. Spodomancy has been practiced by numerous cultures, ancient and modern, across the globe. While many practitioners (particularly in Europe) have performed the ritual as part of a formal system of paranormal, religious, or ceremonial magic, many have done so as part of mere folkloric practice or superstition.

Process

The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus (525–456 BC) noted that ashes falling from a fireplace could be divined for portents. A word, phrase, name, or question would be written in the ashes with a finger or stick. The individual would wait for a breeze to disturb the ashes, which would form new letters or omens and provide an answer. Not everyone could practice the art.

In The Works of Rabelais, Book III (published in 1693), Sir Thomas Urquhart claimed that the ashes and soot must be allowed to rise naturally from the fire. Bone is not the only alternative surface used. Some ancient Greek rituals of spodomancy required that the ashes be spread on a plank of wood rather than the floor. Other sources claim, however, that tephramancy utilized only the ashes of human sacrificial victims.

History

Spodomancy is an ancient and globally widespread divination practice. The gift of prophecy was believed to run in some Greek families, and only they were allowed to seek divination from the ashes left by fires on sacrificial altars. In Ancient Thebes, the altar dedicated to Apollo was known as "Apollo of the Ashes" not only because the altar itself was composed of the ashes of human sacrificial victims but because ashes blowing off the altar could be divined for their portents. The Etruscans of the Italian peninsula, whose civilization existed from 1200 BC to 550 BC, also practiced spodomancy in a fashion similar to the Greeks.

During the Qin (221–206 BC) and Han (206 BC – 220 AD) dynasties in China, a form of spodomancy was used in which the bones of sacrificial animals were raked out of fires and the marks in the ashes and cracks in the bones interpreted for their portents. Several Native American tribes believed that they could divine the future of a newborn or a friend who had left on a journey by looking in the marks and lines left in the ashes of a fire the next morning. From the 16th century to mid 19th century, unmarried English people would draw lines in smooth ashes. The ashes were an indication of a future spouse if two unmarried people sat on the same line. In Kent, this custom was used on Valentine's Day to divine who one should court. Among the Loma people of western Africa, spodomancy is still (as of the late 20th century) used to divine the sex of a child before birth. Chinese people in Taiwan still use the ends of sedan chair poles to mark incense ash on altars, and then interpret the marks for divine communication.

The Greco-Etruscan form of the practice seems to be the most common in Europe, historically. But the rites of the practice varied widely even into the early Renaissance. In Slavonia, only women were permitted to practice spodomancy. A woman would scratch in the ashes. An even number of scratches meant a positive outcome, while an odd number meant bad luck.

In the Celtic pagan tradition, spodomancy did not necessarily require the reading of ashes themselves. The filidh were a class of poet-judge-seers who functioned as keepers of mythology and knowledge, historians, lawyers, arbitrators, linguistic experts, and more. One branch of the filidh was expert solely in divination and dreams, and it was commonly believed that simply sleeping next to the ashes of an animal burned in a sacrificial fire could lead to knowledge about the future.

Historical and modern writers consider spodomancy one of the least-familiar methods of divination. Nonetheless, it was common enough in Spain in the late 16th century so that Archbishop of Seville and Grand Inquisitor Alonso Manrique de Lara had to openly ban the practice. It also seems to have been widely practiced in northwestern Germany around the same time.

Festivals

According to one account of the Celtic pagan tradition of the festival of Imbolc, cold ashes from the fireplace should be spread on the hearth.

An English tradition of the 19th century ("riddling the ashes") involved spodomancy on St. Mark's Eve (April 24). Ashes would be left on the hearth on St. Mark's Eve, and examined the next day. Elsewhere in Europe, the riddling of the ashes to learn of births and deaths was observed on Halloween or New Year's Eve.

Modern Wiccans advocate practicing spodomancy on Lammas or Lughnasadh (August 1). Ashes from a bonfire or even a simple barbecue grill can be spread on the ground, and any symbols or images in the ashes interpreted.

Similar practices

Spodomancy includes at least two and possibly three other divination practices and rituals involving cinders or ashes. These are:

  • Cineromancy/Ceneromancy—Divination involving the ashes of a specifically sacrificial or ritual fire. This ritual calls for the removal of any unburned wood or coals, and interpreting the mounds, ridges, valleys, and other imperfections in the surface. Special attention was paid to intersections of these elements, or where they dead-ended.
  • Libanomancy—Divination by studying the burning of incense, or the patterns made by incense smoke or ash. Most sources places xylomancy under pyromancy (divination by observing flame, coals, or embers or by burning ritual items such as coal, laurel leaves, or salt). But one source claims that spodomancy includes xylomancy.

Divination techniques closely related to spodomancy include osteomancy (divination using bones, particularly that practice which heats them to produce cracks which are portentious), plastromancy (divination using turtle plastrons), scapulimancy (divination using the shoulder blade; the Scottish term is slinneanachd), and sternomancy (divination using the sternum). However, in these practices, fire is used to cause cracks to appear in the bone. Ash may or may not be used to fill in these cracks, making them more visible. This is not spodomancy, however, as the cracks (not the ash itself) are being read.

Spodomancy is distinguishable from capnomancy, which is divination by observing smoke, and pyromancy (and its many subsidiary rituals), which is divination by observing burning things or coals (but not their ash or cinders).

Footnotes

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