7. '^3J^7,yMMc5»»'', from 5^^, to know, is uniformly jndered in A. V. by "tciaawrrf," akin to "wwe" and ) the German verb "twwcn" (old German wisan), to now. (Sept. in four places, yvwrniQ^ a knowing one ; '^ulg. (triahu, most frequenUy.) This Hebrew noun ccurs eleven times, and in every instance is coupled rith nix ; we may thus regard it as indicating a usu- 1 concomitant (perhaps of cleverness and dexterity) rtth ventriloquism : this view is confirmed by the lept. lyyaoTpifiv^oQ, as the rendering of ^SSJ*!^ in Isa. ^, 3, a verse which proves the Egyptian arts of divi- lation were substantially the same as the Hebrew in hat age (comp. Bdttcher, p. 115, § 281 ; and see Raw- inson's note on Herod, ii, 83, in explanation of a seem- ng discrepancy between the prophet and the histori- II.— Q o o
an). In another passage of Isaiah (viii, 19) there oc- curs a good description of these tS'^plT^^in, in the two epithets D'^BSBStth, expressive of the chirping^ pip- ing sounds of young birds, and Q'^fiM^n, applied to the cooing of the dove, in viii, 19. (With the former of these, compare Horace, Sat. i, 8, 40, and with the latter,yirgil, jEneid, iii, 89. So in Homer, //. xi, 101, the shade of Patroclus departs with what Shakspeare [Hamlet, 1, 1] calls a *' squeak and gibber." An un- expected illustration of these arts may be met with in Captain Lyons's Private Journal, p. 858, where he de scribes the feats of the Esquimaux ventriloquist Too- lemak oMgloolik. Compare the curious account of a modem necromancy left us by Benvennto Cellini; both of these are narrated in Sir D. Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic, p. 68-75, and 176-178.) The Sept version, much more inexact than the English, renders the *^35^^ of Deut xviii, 11 by r«f)ara<y»c<$iroff, or ob- server of omens ; what the prodigies were, which, ac- cording to the extravagant belief of the Babbinical writers, were used by these diviners, may be seen in Carpzov, Apparatus, p. 545, 546, where, among others, are adduced the bird Jiddoa and the monster Jaddua, to account for the origin of our term. This, last was, according to the Kabbis, a certain beast in shape like a man (rara/3Xc?ra^a), the bones of which the diviner held in his teeth (Maimon. De Idol, vi, 8 ; Bulenger, De Div. iii, 88 ; Delrio, Disquis. Mag. iv, 2 ; Godwyn's Mas. and A or. iv, 10). The Greek diviner ate certain efficacious parts of animals (Porphyr. De Abstinent, ii). For other bone divin||ions, see Rubmquis's China, p. 65, and Pennant's ScoUand, p. 88 (In Pinkerton). See
WiZABD.
8/^ The last designation used by Moses in the great passage before us (Deut. xvHi, 10, 11) is "^^ X^'y^i D'^nan, doreshf el ham^meihim' (one seeking unto the dead; Sept. i^refxuriuv roifc viKpovc; Vulg. qui qucerit a mortuis veritatem). This points to the fiunous art of necromancy, the viKpofxavrtia, or (as they preferred to write it) viKvofiavTiia of the Greeks. This was a divination in which answers were ^ven by the dead. It was sometimes performed by the magical use of a bone or vein of a dead body, or by pouring warm blood into a corpse, as if to renew life in it (Lucan, Phar. vi, 750). Sometimes they used to raise the ghosts of deceased persons by various ceremonies and invoca- tions. Ulysses, in Odyssey, book ix, having sacrificed black sheep in a ditch, and poured forth libations, in- vites the ghosts, especially that of Tiresias, to drink of the blood, after which they become willing to an- swer his questions. (Compare the evocation of the shade of Darius, for counsel, after the defeat at Sala* mis, in the Persa of iEschylus, 680-634.) This evo- cation of spirits was called yjwxayurfia ; the ofierings of the dead on this occasion were mild and unbloody ; but Gregory Nazianzen (m Orat. IT, contra JuKanJ) speaks idso of ** virgins and boys slaughtered at the evocation of ghosts." From Isa. Ixv, 4, it would ap- pear that the ancient Jews increased the sin of their superstition by using unclean ofitsrings on such occa- sions : '* They remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments" (^3*^^^) will spend the night in these adyta) ; such were the favorite haunts of the necro- mancers : "they eat swine's flesh" — an idolatrous prac- tice (comp. Ovid, Fasti, i, 849 ; Horace, Sat. ii, 8, 164 ; Varro, De He Rust, ii, 4) ; " and broth of abominable things is in thehr vessels." (We are reminded of the celebrated witch scenes in Shakspeare, Madteth, I, 8 ; III, 5 ; and especially IV, 1.) Kosenrattller, in loc, refers, for a like incantation, to Marco Polo, Travels m the East, iii, 24 ; and Sir J. F. Davis, in his China (last ed.), ii, 78, mentions certain magic spells practised by the Taou sect, "with the blood of swine, sheep, dogs, and other impure things." A curious case of necro- mancy also occurs in the story of the philosopher
DIVINATION
834
DIVINATION
Cbnftng-tsze and his wife, in the stme vol. p. 87, 88. In the 16th chap, of Sketches of Impoeture, etc. (In the Familg Library)^ **on Sepulchral and perpetual lampe," may be found an interesting account of the reasons which Induced the Egyptians to bestow so great atten- tion on their dead ; one of them, quoted from Kircher^s History qf Egyptian Antiq., rests on the opinion *'that the souls of the deceased tarry with thehr bodies in the grave." This, added to the conception of the more enlarged knowledge of the dead, lay at the foundation of necromancy. The earliest historical tale of this sort of divination which we recollect is related by Herodo- tus concerning PeriAnder of Corinth and hi% wife Me- lissa, whose spirit he consulted fbr information about a hidden Measure (v, 92). In one of the most inter- esting dialogues of Lucian, the ^^Men^tpus" or ^^Necy- omonteia," a very good description is given of vari- ous necromantic ceremonies. (For an alMtract, see OccuU Sciences, by Smedlcy , etc. p. 188, 1 86.) In Ter- tullian*s treatise, De Anima, occurs a remarkable pas- sage on necromancy, at the conclusion of which he says, " If certain souls have been recalled into their bodies by the power of God as manifest proofs of his prerogative, that is no argument that a similar power should be conferred on audacious magicians, fidladous dreamers, and licentious poets" (c. 66, 57). We may observe, in concluding this subject, that in confining (with Bdttcher) necromancy proper to the last phrase on Moses's list, D'^n^n-bK t)*;?^, we have the author- ity of the A. v., which limits tibe word necromancer (a &iraK 'Kiy6fuvov in our Bibl^ to this phrase. See Kbcbomavcbb.