Divination

[bunsen_h]

beable  wondered if the flour scattered on my kitchen counter was because I'd been doing baking or divination.

Baking, actually.  But we discussed what divination-by-flour would be called.  My first suggestion was "farinomancy".  Beable then checked on the Greek root, and suggested "aleuromancy".

It turns out that "aleuromancy" is the correct name and is a classic historic method of divination.  Go figure.

It should not be confused with "ailuromancy".

Aside: Another phone spammer this morning, trying to sell me a promotional cell phone system, via a pair of phone calls full of garble and dropouts and cut-offs.  The first call was so bad that I was getting working sound less than 10% of the time.  Why do they bother?

Comments

[beable]

*does the preening dance of success*

[dewline.livejournal.com]

So...the Hellenic version of the fortune cookie, then?

Interesting!

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Apparently so. It wouldn't have occurred to me that "slips of paper with writing in baked goods" would be categorized as the same kind of thing as "divination by strewing flour", but language is funny that way.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Re the phone spammer this morning: gotta love salesmanship.