Rhabdomancy
From the Greek words meaning "a rod and divination," is thus alluded to by Sir Thomas Brown :-" As for the divination or decision from the staff, it is an augurial relic, and the practice thereof is accused by God himself: My people ask counsel of their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them. Of this kind was that practised by Nabuchadonosor in that Caldean miscellany delivered by Ezekiel." In Brand's Antiquities the following description is cited from a MS. Discourse on Witchcraft, written by Mr. John Bell, 1705, p. 41; it is derived from Theophylact:-" They set up two staffs, and having whispered some verses and incantations, the staffs fell by the operation of demons. Then they considered which way each of them fell, forward or backward, to the right or left hand, and agreeably gave responses, having made use of the fall of their staffs for their signs." This is the Grecian method of Rhabdomancy, and St. Jerome thinks it is the same that is alluded to in the above passage of Hosea, and in Ezekiel xxi. 21, 22, where it is rendered "arrows." Belomancy and Rhabdomancy, in fact, have been confounded in these two passages, and it is a question whether in one of the methods arrows and rods or stones were not used indifferently. The practice is said to have passed from the Chaldeans and Scythians to the German tribes, who used pieces from the branch of a fruit tree, which they marked with certain characters, and threw at hazard upon a white cloth. Something like this, according to one of the rabbis, was the practice of the Hebrews, only instead of characters, they peeled their rods on one side, and drew the presage from their manner of falling. The Scythians and the Alani used rods of the myrtle and sallow, and as the latter chose "fine straight wands" according to Herodotus, it may be inferred that their method was that of the Hebrews, or some modification of it.