#alectromancy

[witch-upon-starr]

Fun fact

Alectromancy is divination by observing roosters pecking their food.

Make a circle using the letters of the alphabet (use chalk, use sticks to write in mud, use cut out letters, etc).

Place an equal amount of grain on top of each letter.

Put a rooster in the center of the circle and let him loose.

Observe the order the rooster picks up the grain. The words that are formed is your oracle.

[chickensinliterature]

Magic and Divination from CHICKEN by Annie Potts 

This post welcomes you to our new page “Chicken Recommended” wherein us chickens get to bring you some things we particularly like and care about.  Click here.

“Chickens play a role in divination for many cultures. The Azande tribe of Sudan feeds chickens benge, a substance poisonous to them, and determines the answer to a problem depending on whether or not the birds survive. Africans taken to America as slaves brought with them beliefs about divination and magic; one traditions deemed that ‘the avid scratchings of a wildly feathered, “frizzled” chicken in the earth [revealed] that some dangerous unknown maleficence lay beneath the surface’.The Pwa Ka Nyaw Po of Myanmar and Kariang or Yang tribes of Thailand use bamboo splinters insertied in the holes of chicken bones during rheir fortune-telling ceremonies, and decisions are based on the angles thet the splinters arrange into when placed inside the perforations.

The role of chickens as soothsayers goes back to ancient times. In Greek legend Alectryon was sent to guard against intrusion while Ares and Aphrodite conducted and illicit affair. Because he fell asleep at his post, leaving the two lovers to be discovered by Helios the sun, Alectryon was turned into a rooster so that he would forever remember to announce the coming dawn. Fortune-telling involving chickens is therefore called alectromancy, from the Greek for alectruon for ‘cock’ and manteia meaning ‘divination’. Alectromancers interpret chicken entrails during ritual named haruspicy; they examine stones found in the stomachs of roosters (a practice called alectorii); and they observe chickens’ appetites through a process called oraculum ex tripudio. For the latter method a circle is created using the letters of the alphabet, each sprinkled with an equal quantity of grain. A rooster or a hen is placed in the circle and observed to see how quickly he or she eatsand which letters are favoured. The letters chosen spell out a prophesy—a gallinaceous precursor of the Ouija board. 

The Etruscan civilization of ancient Italy and Corsica used another version of alectromancy: a high priest interpreted the order in which hens pecked at corn. The Etruscans also originated the wishbone custom—the practice of pulling apart the chicken’s dried clavicle bone to determine who gets the longer fragment and is thereby granted a wish. Both traditions were adopted by the Romans when they colonized Etruscan society at the end of the sixth century BC.” 

Painting of Woman Feeding the Hens from Tacuinum sanitatis, a medieval health and wellness book (ca. 1370-1400).

[smallandtinyhomeideas]

Wishbone Tiny Homes | Teal Brown & Associates

photos / Christopher Tack

Gentle reminder: dry your bones thoroughly prior to alectryomancy.