Opening the text

Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predestForsyth, J. S.

History

Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predest

Forsyth, J. S.

Demonology; Superstition; Witchcraft

Polydore Virgil defines Geomancy a kind of divination performed by means
of clefts or chinks made in the ground; and he takes the Persian magi to
have been the inventors of it. _De invent. rer._ lib. 1, c. 23.

⁂ Geomancy is formed of the Greek γη _terra_, earth; and μαντεια,
divination; it being the ancien custom to cast little pebbles on the
ground, and thence to form their conjecture, instead of the points
above-mentioned.


                        HYDROMANCY, ὙΔΡΟΜΑΤΕΙΑ,

The art of divining or foretelling future events by means of water; and
is one of the four general kinds of divination: the other three, as
regarding the other elements, _viz._ fire and earth, are denominated
Pyromancy, Aeromancy, and Geomancy already mentioned.

The Persians are said by Varro to have been the first inventors of
Hydromancy; observing also that Numa Pompilius, and Pythagoras, made use
of it.

There are various Hydromantic machines and vessels, which are of a
singularly curious nature.


                              NECROMANCY,

Is the art of communicating with devils, and doing surprising things by
means of their aid; particularly that of calling up the dead and
extorting answers from them. (See MAGIC.)


                             ONEIROCRITICA,

Is the art of interpreting dreams; or a method of foretelling future
events by means of dreams.

From several passages of Scripture, it appears that, under the Jewish
dispensation, there was such a thing as foretelling future events by
dreams; but there was a particular gift or revelation required for that
purpose. Hence it would appear that dreams are actually significative of
something to come; and all that is wanting among us is, the
_Oneirocritica_, or the art of knowing what: still it is the general
opinion of the present day that dreams are mere chimera, induced by
various causes, have no affinity with the realization of future events;
but having, at the same time, indeed, some relation to what has already
transpired.

With respect to Joseph’s dream, “it was possible,” says an old author,
“for God, who knew all things, to discover to him what was in the womb
of fate; and to introduce that, he might avail himself of a dream; not
but that he might as well have foretold it from any other accident or
circumstance whatever; unless God, to give the business more importance,
should purposely communicate such a dream to Pharoah, in order to fall
in with the popular notion of dreams and divination, which at that time
was so prevalent among the Egyptians.”

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