Divination methods

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Doing a web search for "divination methods" yields a cornucopia of fun stuff.

Urban mages might have updated versions of ancient methods, like an updated version of Zoomancy which works by observing the behavior of subway rats fighting over a piece of discarded pizza.

Speaking of doing web searches and modern divination, I don't know what you'd call it, but searching up relevant keywords and clicking through to a random page seems like an interesting form of divination in the internet age.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I had a character divine the future by watching diviners divine the future. That character was . . . interesting to say the least.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I had a character divine the future by watching diviners divine the future. That character was . . . interesting to say the least.

Metamancy, perhaps?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Metamancy, perhaps?

I think we called it augurmancy.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I think we called it augurmancy.

Mantymancy? Or is that too mincy? :)

[Anders]

Forumancy - divination by watching thread drift.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anders

Forumancy - divination by watching thread drift.

Necrospamomancy - divination based upon which threads the spambots bring back from the dead. Not to be confused with what happens when a practitioner of dark magic applies his/her art to canned meat.

Brickwallomancy - divination based upon how long it takes to get a response to a difficult, esoteric question on the forum. Many practitioners make the mistake of opening the thread with an overly-long post, and have learned to do their divination based on how long it takes the never-answered question to get pushed back to page 3.

[RGTraynor]

Actually, I have a quasi-real memory on this. My wife and I were longtime players in a boffer fantasy LARP, and our characters both had a divination ability, where a marshal or the eventholder would feed us some info. She decided on a form of automatic writing, where she'd have a small blank book with colored pencils to hand, and have the marshal draw in it. On the one hand, it was usually an abstract representation limited to the marshal's artistic ability. On the other, she always had an objective, permanent record she could show to other people, not only at that event but down the road. Very effective.


So ... graphimancy?

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Actually, I have a quasi-real memory on this. My wife and I were longtime players in a boffer fantasy LARP, and our characters both had a divination ability, where a marshal or the eventholder would feed us some info. She decided on a form of automatic writing, where she'd have a small blank book with colored pencils to hand, and have the marshal draw in it. On the one hand, it was usually an abstract representation limited to the marshal's artistic ability. On the other, she always had an objective, permanent record she could show to other people, not only at that event but down the road. Very effective.


So ... graphimancy?

I'm sure that there's a Greek or Latin name for automatic writing, I'm just not sure it's that (though it might be).

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I'm sure that there's a Greek or Latin name for automatic writing, I'm just not sure it's that (though it might be).

It has been called "psychography"