Anthropomancy
Divination by the entrails of men or women. This horrible usage is very ancient. Herodotus said that Menelaus, detained in Egypt by contrary winds, sacrificed to his barbarous curiosity, two children of the country, and sought to discover his destiny by means of anthropomancy. Heliogabalus practised this means of divination. Julian the Apostate, in his magical operations, during his nocturnal sacrifices, caused, it is said, a large number of children to be killed, so that he might consult their entrails. In his last expedition, being at Carra, in Mesopotamia, he shut himself in the Temple of the Moon, and having done all manner of evil there, he sealed the Antichrist doors and posted a guard, whose duty it was to see that they were not opened until his return. However, he was killed in battle with the Persians, and those who entered the Temple of Carra, in the reign of Julian's successor, found there a woman hanging by her hair, with her liver torn out. It is probable that Gilles de Retz (q.v.) also practised this dreadful species of divination.