Xylomancy
Divination by means of wood, practised particularly in Slavonia. It is the art of reading omens from the position of small pieces of dry wood found in one's path. No less certain presages of future events may be Y-Kim, Book of: A Chinese mystical book attributed to the
Emperor Fo-Hi, and ascribed to the year, 3468 B.C. It consists of ten chapters, and is stated by Eliphas Levi in his
History of Magic to be a complement and an appendix to the Kabalistic Zohar, or record of the utterances of Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai. The Zohar, says Levi, explains universal equilibrium, and the Y-Kim is the hieroglyphic and ciphered demonstration thereof. The key to the Y-Kim is a pantacle known as the Trigrams of Fo-Hi. In the Vay-Ky of Leon-Tao-Yuen, composed in the Som dynasty (about eleventh century) it is recounted that the Emperor Fo-Hi was one day seated on the banks of a river, deep in meditation, when to him there appeared an animal having the parts of both a horse and a dragon. Its back was covered with scales, on each of which shone the mystic Trigrammic symbol. This animal initiated the just and righteous Fo-Hi into universal science. Numbering its scales, he combined the Trigrams in such a manner that there arose in his mind a synthesis of sciences compared and united with one another through the harmonies of nature. From this synthesis sprang the tables of the Y-Kim. The numbers of Fo-Hi are identical with those of the Kabala, and his pantacle is similar to that of Solomon. His tables are in correspondence with the subject-matter of the Sephir Yetzirah and the Zohar. The whole is a commentary upon the Absolute which is concealed from the profane, concludes Levi, but as he had little real acquaintance with the subject, these analogies must be taken as of small value.
Yadachi, or weather conjurer: (See Siberia.)