United States or Brazil ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In comparatively recent times, it was pretended that by this means hidden treasures could be discovered. It now appears to be altogether exploded in Europe. Onomancy, or the foretelling a man's fate by the letters of his name, and the various transpositions of which they are capable, is a more modern sort of divination; but it reckons comparatively few believers.
From this worthy precedent of Judicial Astrology, others took the hint and invented new modes of divination, such as Geomancy, Chiromancy, Onomancy, and the like; till the world by degrees became so overrun with superstition, that the least trifle was converted into a presage or presentiment; and the more so when this kind of knowledge became the business of religion; and when the substance of divine worship consisted in the ordinances of Augurs who, to make themselves necessary in the world, were obliged to keep up and quicken men's apprehensions of the wrath of God, took special care to cultivate comets, and bring it into a proverb, that "so many comets so many calamities."
Word Of The Day