Dactylomancy

An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)

A term covering various forms of divination practised with the aid of rings. One method resembles the table-rapping of modern spiritualism. A round table is inscribed with the letters of the alphabet, and a ring suspended above it. The ring, it is said, will indicate certain letters, which go to make up the message required. It was used, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, to find Valen's successor, and the name Theodosius was correctly indicated. Solemn services of a religious character accompanied this mode of divination. Another form of dactylomancy, of which there is no detailed account, was practised with rings of gold, silver, copper, iron or lead, had their origin in Phrygia. Their number is given differwhich were placed on the finger-nails in certain conjunc-ently by different authorities. Some say it equals the Dactyls; A class of sorcerers and scientific physicians who number of fingers on the hands-five male and five female. Pausanias says five, Perecydes fifty-two, twenty right and thirty-two left; while Orpheus the Argonaut mentions a large number. The dactyls were magicians, exorcists, conjurors, soothsayers. Plutarch says that they made their appearance in Italy as sorcerers; while their magical practices and mysteries threw the inhabitants of Samothrace into consternation. They were credited with the discovery of minerals and the notes of the musical scale; also with the discovery and use of the Ephesian mines They introduced fire into Crete, musical instruments into Greece . They were good runners and dancers, skilled in science and learning, and from them came the first wise men. They are said by some to have been the magnetic powers and spirits, whose head was Hercules.