Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Divination by means of inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In Roman antiquity, divination by inspection of entrails.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable
Haruspicy : the study anddivination by use of animalentrails , usually the victims of sacrifice. - noun countable A specific instance of such divination.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The very rites of Etruscans which were designed to divine the future from the internal organs of sheep, themselves imported traditions traced back to Babylonian extispicy, are necessarily built on a lost metaphor of the Earth, not only as cold, dark and moist but also a living deity, complete with innards.
Archive 2010-03-01 2010
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The very rites of Etruscans which were designed to divine the future from the internal organs of sheep, themselves imported traditions traced back to Babylonian extispicy, are necessarily built on a lost metaphor of the Earth, not only as cold, dark and moist but also a living deity, complete with innards.
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This magical pattern is, oddly enough, an abstract representation of the "bowels of the earth" and a reference to both the divinatory practice of extispicy and an ancient conception of the journey of the sun under the horizon during the course of the night2.
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One link online concerning Babylonian haruspicy i.e. the practice of divining the future through sheep livers may oddly enough help us shed some light on Etruscan rites, beliefs and cosmology: Sacrificial divination: Confirmation of extispicy.
Archive 2009-01-01 2009
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The labyrinth is the Minoan conception of the underworld, the winding entrails of the earth cf. extispicy.
More about egg symbols in Etruria and the rest of the classical world 2009
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One link online concerning Babylonian haruspicy i.e. the practice of divining the future through sheep livers may oddly enough help us shed some light on Etruscan rites, beliefs and cosmology: Sacrificial divination: Confirmation of extispicy.
-
This magical pattern is, oddly enough, an abstract representation of the "bowels of the earth" and a reference to both the divinatory practice of extispicy and an ancient conception of the journey of the sun under the horizon during the course of the night2.
Archive 2009-03-01 2009
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The labyrinth is the Minoan conception of the underworld, the winding entrails of the earth cf. extispicy.
More about egg symbols in Etruria and the rest of the classical world 2009
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"For, in the present excited condition of our river-towns, men do not strive to copy the moderate virtues of the Ancients, but only to exaggerate their heathenish extispicy."
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 72, October, 1863 Various
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On to the kinnor 2010
lampbane commented on the word extispicy
Divination using the remains of sacrificed animals.
November 30, 2007
avivamagnolia commented on the word extispicy
Divination using entrails
January 17, 2009
madmouth commented on the word extispicy
what won't they divinate on!?
May 21, 2009
jmjarmstrong commented on the word extispicy
JM is gutted by extispicy.
May 9, 2011