Placing Steven Erikson’s Manuromancy in the Larger Tradition of Hieromantic Divination: A Socratic Dialogue
By Mame Bougouma Diene with Steven Erikson in Conversation
The following real and fictional analysis of (by the grace of God) fictional Manuromancy (the art of divination in feces) is based on Steven Erikson’s novella Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords published by PS Publishing in 2021, the seventh novella in the Bauchelain & Korbal Broach series, spinning off from The Malazan Book of the Fallen.
It is divided into four parts:
I – Introduction.
II – A factual overview of the origins and practices of hieromancy/haruspices.
III – An overview of differing approaches to prophecy and divination in epic fantasy.
IV – A fictional contextualization of manuromancy in relation to hieromancy/haruspices.
I – Introduction
When Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker by slicing a Tauntaun open and emptying its guts, attempting to survive a night in the subglacial plains of Hoth, he missed a prime opportunity to read the future. If only he’d been more versed in the finer points of hieromancy, perhaps he would have saved Luke’s hand in the process.
Indeed, while many a finer class of societies frown upon the art of divination, perhaps because enough money and you do not so much need to foretell the future as to wish it into existence and/or weather it as the case may be, humanity as a whole, has, over the course of millennia devised ever more jaw-dropping techniques to predict and hopelessly attempt to thwart the wyrd sisters’ nigh karmic hand.
Even the most stubborn of disbelievers will, in a moment of despair, seek solace in the pages of their daily horoscope, in the chicken scratch of a fortune cookie, or while in the thrall of athletic frenzy, in the mental clairvoyance of goats, parrots, octopus, cats, pigs, ants, at least one kangaroo, meerkats, and/or penguins. Either that or unwashed underwear, which while objectively distasteful at least verges on hieromancy or to the point of this here paean, the under appreciated art of manuromancy and its objective equal distastefulness.
Bear with me.
[Steven Erikson: and with me, too. The strangeness of the world before the internet was that nobody really knew just how strange that world was. Imagine entering an outhouse, hungover and smelling of mosquito coils, peering down into the hole (as one does, if only to position oneself properly) and meeting a pair of beady eyes glinting back up at you from the earthy gloom below?
To this day I choose to believe that the woodchuck (or whatever it was) had an alternate route to and from the deep pit, and barring the unthinkable, had acquired a taste for slightly (or egregiously) used toilet paper. Or maybe it was just exploring.
Is it apocryphal the lurid tale of some guy caught lurking at the bottom of an outhouse? Imagine what your friends and family would think of that? ‘It was only the once, honey, I swear it!’ One presumes the perverse pleasures of the witnessing thereof lean more towards the divine than the divining, but who knows, right?
I like to think the woodchuck, which subsequently disappeared, then didn’t, then did, eventually set off to finer pastures. And if it had a mate, well, lipstick on the collar would surely have elicited a milder reaction upon its fateful return home. Either way, a night in the woodshed for the woodchuck.]
[Mame Bougouma Diene: This reminds me of a scene from The Young Pope, Steve, where Pius XIII surmises that buried under the ice of Greenland, that never quite thaws, there, you may find God.
I am of the belief that God resides not in the infinitely big, but in the infinitely small. That if you dig below the surface of the atom, into the smallest point in the universe, you will find a giant eye, staring back at you, holding the secrets of the universe.
Perhaps that woodchuck was but an avatar of the almighty, his ways, both spiritual and digestive, a mystery to the human mind.
In my days in the Southern Sahara, Northern Niger, in the sandstorm beaten town of Agadez, the millennial trading post known by the Tuareg as the Southern Cross, I had an encounter quite similar to yours.
Imagine my surprise, upon rising from my daily delivery (or sometimes thrice daily – if lucky – depending on the food I ingested and the cook’s cleanliness) and pulling the flush—only for a left over floater, to my utmost horror, to twist and turn, splashing the bowl with a will to live I could only admire, inducing a fit of prepubescent yelping that I am not ashamed to admit. “Holy shit what did I shit?” Were my exact words, I believe.
As it turns out it was a gecko, who, residing along the rim of the bowl, was dislodged from its home by the power of the rim jets. I could have flushed harder and sent it down the drain, but mercy guided my hand and, after much tribulation, it made its way back into the rim.
Needless to say, I never bothered to use that specific toilet again, for it was a house, a home and as I too like to imagine all these years later, much as your fated woodchuck, a humble abode of lizardly love.]
II – Entrails Divination in the Ancient World.
Hieromancy or Haruspicy (also known as Extispicy the latter focused specifically on intestinal divination), in our post-Western understanding of the world, resting upon divining the future in the entrails of, most often, animals, stems from the near east and Marduk’s priests. Predominantly, but not limited to, the liver. As many of our traditions, a Babylonian offshoot through way of Greece and filtered through the dominance of Roman cultural expansion.
The Latin terms haruspex and haruspicina are from an archaic word, hīra = “entrails, intestines” (cognate with hernia = “protruding viscera” and hira = “empty gut”; PIE *ǵʰer-) and from the root spec- = “to watch, observe”. The Greek ἡπατοσκοπία hēpatoskōpia is from hēpar = “liver” and skop- = “to examine”.1
[Steven Erikson: Mame, any etymological connection of worth between the words ‘excrement’ and ‘increment’? The former (crement?) leaves, as it were, with said exudation emerging in, uh, increments? How does one measure these things, anyway? Breath held, I await, your reply, perhaps by footnote]2
Hieromancy is the preferred term here, I didn’t want the audience (if there is one) to wonder what kind of fish a spicy haru was3, and the suffix “mancy” imbues anything it touches with a veneer of evil gravitas that raises even lowly, if essential, manure to as near the Godhead as gravity will allow.
The practice of hieromancy, as mentioned above, found its origins along the Tigris and Euphrates, that, as most riverine systems do, served as a natural external plumbing system, discharging human and animal refuse into the waters of the would-be Persian Gulf. The details of which (hieromancy, not animal or human refuse) collected in the Bārûtu4, or the “art of the diviner,” a Mesopotamian compendium of the science of haruspicy stretching over around a hundred cuneiform tablets assembled in the Neo-Assyrian/Babylonian period.
The barūtû is divided into ten “chapters” each dealing with a different aspect of entrails divination, the most relevant to this study, for lack of a better word, the BE ŠÀ.NIGIN in Cuneiform or šumma tirānu in Akkadian, meaning ‘intestines’ in layman’s English, focusing on parts of the sheep other than the liver and lungs, and including the coils or convolutions of the sacrificial animal’s colon and kidneys. The task of the bārû, or diviner, through mystical means lost in the sands that buried the Middle East, is to read the portents of the future in the inner organs of sacrificed beasts.
The tradition observed by the Hittite as well as the Akkadians and Egyptians found, by way of Persia and Achaemenid conquest, its way into the Mediterranean.
The Greek mid sixth century to the late fourth century BC saw a wave of orientalization ranging from art to sciences5. Walter Burkert described the new movement in Greek art as a revolution: “With bronze reliefs, textiles, seals, and other products, a whole world of eastern images was opened up which the Greeks were only too eager to adopt and adapt in the course of an ‘orientalizing revolution.” The same Walter Burkert has argued that it was migrating seers and healers who transmitted their skills in divination and purification ritual along with elements of their mythological wisdom to the Greeks.
This overlap included the belief that the liver held properties which elevated it above other organs, thus making it central to divination in the classical world of the Greeks and the Romans thereafter.
Augurs6 and haruspices were of such prominence in Rome that all matters political, military, and civil were sanctioned and legitimized by augury and haruspices—to such an extent that Cicero himself considered the Augur (Roman priest) the most important authority in Rome, save presumably for himself.
As Roman historian Livy put it: “Who does not know that this city was founded only after taking the auspices, that everything in war and in peace, at home and abroad, was done only after taking the auspices?”7
So deep was the belief in the primacy of divination that even Romulus and Remus (Rome’s founding figures) were considered Augurs themselves. Romulus in particular. His sightings outweighing those of his brother Remus, whom he murdered or had murdered. In other words, Remus didn’t see it coming, which he would have, were he the better Augur.
It is relevant here to distinguish between hieromantic haruspices from augury, divining the future in bird signs; whether the birds he saw flew in groups or alone, what noises they made as they flew, the direction of flight, what kind of birds they were, how many there were, or how they fed, and presumably, how the feed passed.
Augury took precedence over haruspices. This would seem evident in the semantic choices over the name of priests as augurs. It’s hard not to imagine why, but even assuming that smell had nothing to do with it, it did not bode well for manuromancers, for the exact same reason. One may be respected for talking s@%t, but few are for reading it, regardless of how right they are. Guts and poop being certainly less priestly than, well, birds and poop, as it were.
Ours is an unjust world, where flight soars while feces sink.
[Steven Erikson: here’s another anecdote to float past you, Mame. Mongolia, seven hours’ north of Ulaanbaatar. I had just fled the worst archaeological project I’ve ever experienced, one punctuated by a camp designed to kill every one of us, with tents pitched beneath tall trees that were scorched from the top down, in a valley that was lightning-storm alley; and an outhouse erected above a hole dug into the floodplain not twenty meters from the stream where we got our water. Oh, and did I mention the goat’s head soup derived from a severed goat’s head left lying on the ground for three days before finding the pot? This latter detail highlights the state of the following experience:
You see, none of that compared to my journey back to Ulaanbaatar, when the bus pulled over in the middle of nowhere on the steppe, and we all piled out to set eyes upon a row of a dozen doorless side-by-side-by-side outhouses, the row itself a ten-foot high, forty-foot-long wall, all of it splashed from top to bottom with explosive hues of yellow and brown. A sight so horrific even the flies avoided it.
This evidence of bowel-violence was something to behold (at a distance), and is it a wonder to note that no-one made use of these totemic monoliths to dysentery, rather, choosing to squat in the open to do their thing?]
[Mame Bougouma Diene: My, my, my, Steve you may have just fingered one of my favorite historical rabbit holes. The Golden Histories and Chinggis Khan posteriority.
You are aware of the nomadic legend that is Temujin Borjigin’s impossible progeny. There is of course no evidence, hard, soft or liquid with hints of berries, that this is true. Most likely a common haplotype among Turkic populations of the plateau at the time, all complicated by the fact that no DNA can be retrieved, that Jochi was not his son, and that every miserable ass the world around wants to claim some of the Great Khan’s heritage.
We know not where he is buried, but we may know where he died, in the Liupan Shan in Northwestern China, in a valley imbued with miraculous virtues for reason of medicinal herbs still in abundance today.
If one were to dig deep enough, they may find a fossilized stool and compare it to the fatuous display of undeniable DNA evidence you so specifically reference, it may yet reveal the truth behind the myth.
We still wouldn’t know where the Khan lies, but if we knew what he lay, we may know truth from the lies. How I wish I were there, a lonely blue fly on that wall…]
III – Divination and Prophecy in Epic Fantasy
I’m pretty sure we don’t have to do this part, but for the lingering feeling that, as with all things fantasy, it is prophesied.
There is no such thing as free will in the world of fantasy, only the illusion thereof and the delusions of minor character arcs all believing to be, in any particular order, The Dragon Reborn, The Boy Who Lived, Azor Ahai, or the literal Pawn of Prophecy for crying out loud.
It almost takes all the fun out of twelve-hundred-page door stoppers, if not for the illusion it creates in the mind of the feeble, yet determined, aforementioned minor characters, who, upon seeing the red comet, interpret it to mean the best for themselves and only themselves.
It is a flaw of human nature that we lack the introspective ability to realize that, while we are most certainly the hero of our own story, most of our stories are not heroic enough to make it into the actual narrative. Most of us would be lucky enough to appear long enough to catch an arrow in the neck. That character slowly liquefying while covered in purulent boils to the amusement of necromancers? That’s not you either. Not that the same thing isn’t happening to you. It’s just happening off camera.
Prophecy serves the same purpose in fantasy as a clue in a murder mystery. Yes, the answer is the brown-haired orphan with a knack for swords, but luckily enough there will be several to pick from, and if the author is clever, the character will be so unlikable as to be dismissed right off the bat, allowing for a both frustrating and fulfilling climax. The uncomfortable strain of pushing through to an inevitable hollow relief. Unless you’re that kind of guy. If so, please keep reading.
Divination, of course, plays a significant part in the underpinning and progressive unfolding of prophecy, and is present across various novels in many different ways.
- Pyromancy – divination through looking into the flames of a fire for visions of the future is central to George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and exemplified in the TV series Game of Thrones under the influence of priests and priestess of the Red God.
- Oneiromancy – the reading of dreams to gain insight into the future. Featured multiple times in the Old Testament. A recent example in fantasy can be found in The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt when Geralt seeks information about a haunted house from the oneiromancer, Corinne Tilly.
- Scrying – the act of peering into a reflective medium to detect significant visions or messages. The Mirror of Galadriel is used for scrying. Showing “things that were, things that are, and some things that have not yet come to pass.”8 So is Saruman’s palantír. Or any damn palantír.
- Hematomancy – The ability to gain insight into a question or situation using blood as a conduit. This is used recently in Tony Adeyimi’s Children of Blood and Bone, where a seer uses the ash in her blood with an incantation to see the future combining elements of Spodomancy – divination by examining cinders, soot or ashes.
- Astro-amathomancy9 – combination of astrology (reading the stars) and amathomancy (divination using dust, sand, silt or the ashes of the recently deceased) the ability to gain insight into the future by use of stardust. Used by the Nanny Ogg and Grannie Weatherwax in Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters.
- Caecomancy10 – combination of caeca (Latin for blind) and mancy (divination), divination powers borne of voluntary blindness. This practice appears in Rebecca Roanhorse’s novel Black Sun. There appears to be historical precedent in Korea during the Joseon period (1392 – 1897 AD) where blind people were attributed divinatory powers.11
All the above are both strange and fascinating in their own right, but none as much as Steven Erikson’s manuromancy in the Malazan, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novella, Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords.
[Steven Erikson: Among the spattering deluge of advice given to young writers, how often will we hear ‘write what you know’? As dubious as that advice may be (and it most certainly is), let it not be said that in my life experience, I don’t know shit when I see it.
Case in point: while conducting an archaeological investigation many years ago, in our search (with shovels) to find the outer walls of Upper Fort Garry in the city of Winnipeg, we found ourselves three meters down in a trench that intersected the old (now mostly vanished) fort’s latrine. Alas, soil conditions being what they were, the deposit(s) was, until that moment of discovery, anaerobically sealed. In lay terms, devoid of oxygen and so not subject to organic breakdown, it was as fresh as the day it was dumped (and dumped).
After frantic tests for smallpox and other zombie resurrections, we were cleared to continue digging (No, please, after you), and barring some outbreaks of strange rashes and whatnot among excavators, the subsequent donning of hazmat suits and surgical gloves, things proceeded apace. Smoothly, even.
Now, you might wonder at the value of persisting our downward dive into stratigraphic layers of you-know-what. I know I did. It turns out, however, that the latrine delivered proof of a certain socioeconomic continuity that, if commonsensical, nonetheless underscored myriad assumptions. How so? You see, Upper Fort Garry at the time of its occupation (nineteenth century, mostly), was by law a ‘dry’ fortification. No booze permitted. Curious, then, that we found innumerable liquor bottles within the slurry soup of feces (along with the newspapers used to wipe derrieres, which, it turned out, were still readable – the newspapers, not the derrieres. Thus providing additional – if not entirely solid – evidence pointing to the long-standing and long-sitting relationship between the pot and reading material). The evidence, all gathered, pointed to this being an officer’s latrine.
One might imagine a Master’s thesis at least, emerging, if slowly and with some strain, from this discovery, the central assertion being that what goes for the hoi polloi doesn’t go for the toffs. Since it was the toffs making up the rules, it’s hardly surprising that they reserved the right to break them. One supposes the rationalization went something like this: ‘It won’t do well for the Empire’s interests in having our common soldiers drunk on the battlefields! Who knows who they might shoot? Plastered officers? Well, that’s par for the course, don’t you know.’ And there you have the history of the British Empire in a nutshell (nutshells? We found those, too).
My point? Why, divination via human poop is anything but fictional. And yes, sometimes you just have to write what you know (but the knowing thereof is far from done, as will be seen).
That said, I never did write that thesis.]
[Mame Bougouma Diene: But you just did Steve.
Somewhere in that underground river of poop you saw the past as clearly as a divinator sees the future (and perhaps found your true calling).
Think of it as your flavored Water of Life as it were. Spice, Steve, as you must have surmised, is mostly dried larval sandworm excrement marinated in larval sandworm regurgitation. When we are told that history is written on the sands of Arrakis, it is, very much as your aged and matured discovery, written in giant heaps of sandworm feces. The past and the future, all at once, all the same. The same ol’shit in other words, echoing through time.
From a nonlinear, possibly oblong and pointy, perspective time echoes backwards and forwards, and sometimes marinates in the middle, obfuscating thought, until, much like the treasure trove of turds you uncovered, the not quite metaphorical load, bearing the foundations of Winnipeg if you will, is allowed an outlet into the outhouse of the soul.
That is to say: be it future divination or past defecation, it is a small miracle in and of itself, and is but just another part of history repeating. As a resident of Winnipeg yourself, one might be so lucky as to uncover your latrines, on a dark day of futures passed (haha), where the sky turns brown and know not just the man, but his mind.]
IV – Manuromancy as a Legitimate Form of Divination
The word manuromancy is adapted from Late Latin manuromantia: a loan word from the post-Classical Greek Μανουρομαντεία (manuromanteía), itself a compound of Ancient Greek mανουρο (manure in Latin or “poop”) and μαντεία (manteía, or ‘divination’). The original meaning translated by way of Middle English maynouren, manuren (“to spread poop, fertilize”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman meinourer and Old French manovrer12.
In modern English, it echoes the traditional meaning of animal excrement, especially that of common domestic farm animals and when used as fertilizer—generally speaking, from cows, horses, sheep, pigs and chickens.
Manuromancing13 as a divination technique covers manure writ large, encompassing both animal (bestia-manure) and human excrement (humanure or civis-manure), revealing the polymathic nature of true manuromancy.
Before we further delve into the daily bowl of prophetic poop that is the Manuromancer’s digested bread, butter and so much more, it is essential we replace the age-old tradition in, as this article portends to do, in the larger tradition of historic and respected hieromancy, albeit with a caveat, and larger divination techniques both modern and ancient.
While it does not carry the same respect, manuromancy is a form of post-digestive hieromancy, concerned with the finished product of bowel movements, rather than, as in the case of Haruspices, pre-evacuation digested materials.
In other words, while hieromancy especially in the Mesopotamian tradition of Bārûtu (described above) particularly the BE ŠÀ.NIGIN (Cuneiform), concerns itself with intestinal and colorectal divination, manuromancy represents a continuation along the spectrum, concerning itself with instances of post-rectal, fecal divination.
Hieromancy and manuromancy are thus variations of the same practice. While both disturbing, one, and I leave which for you to decide, is decidedly more disturbing than the other.
Much as with augurs and haruspices in ancient Rome, manuromancy is not elevated to the revered level of haruspices. Elevation, in the case of manuromancy, being a case of immediate medical concern, as fecal angling (of high importance in conducting precise manuromantic readings) favors a definite downwards turn.
In fact, manuromancy, while perfectly adequate in divination terms, was frowned upon by our Roman forebears as a perverted religious practice.
The Romans drew a clear line between which beliefs could be elevated to the rank of religion (religio) and what constituted superstition (superstitio) which in the Roman understanding meant a morally perverted religion, unlike our modern definition of irrational belief14.
This applied to manuromancy in relation to haruspices. While the Romans did not doubt the veracity of fecal divination, “shit reading” or merda legens (the derogatory term applied to manuromancy) was relegated to the rank of superstitio. While haruspices read the signs of the Gods in the entrails of animals, manuromancy divined in human fecal matter, both repulsive and personal, constituting thus a perversion of Roman religious tradition.
Class distinction may have further played a role in the demeaning of manuromancy, considered a practice of the plebe, confined to, and expanding after, the creation of public bathhouses in the 2nd century BC, providing the poor with both elevated sanitary standards and astounding amounts of crap for manuromancers to divine from. Thus thinning the already fine line between nobilis and vulgaris, which the Roman higher echelons couldn’t countenance.
Unsurprisingly, whiffs of manuromancy are rumored to have flatulated their way through the bowels of history.
Apocryphal though the evidence, it is believed that the tradition of royal fecal examination may have derived from manuromancy, stripped of its higher divination purposes. Although the Tudors’ predictive fetishism leaned towards astronomy15, The Groom of the Stool, manuromancer of his day, was, against very unlikely odds, an envied and respected position16, that Henry VII elevated, as surely the king shits gold, to the rank of fiscal policy advisor.
Less likely even, though certainly amusing to imagine, Japanese smart toilets may very well be manuromantic offshoots. And finally the cult classic, The Human Centipede, is said to be inspired by the occult practices of a mad manuromancer obsessed with group divination, in what are wildly believed to be the first known experiences in mass psychology.
Most of our knowledge of manuromancy comes from the work of butt one man, who, much as the great painters of the Renaissance: Michael-Angelo, Donatello and Raphael, goes only by one name and one name alone, Burok. His work splattered as so many of his readings across various texts, manuscripts, and bathroom stalls, often in conversation with various members of society, speaks to the expansive and accepted nature of manuromancy, cutting across social divides, at least for a time.
Burok while in conversation with a cobbler:
“…The signs from this morning’s dump remained uncertain.”
“Whose dump was it?”
“It was the Mayor’s if you must know. Two floaters and one big one like a brick in the bottom of the bowl. The drift of the floaters was widdershins, but agitated, while the sinker was fast dissolving into a yellowy cloud… representing one of two possibilities. Namely, salvation or doom.”17
Burok on his preference for humanuromancy over manuromancy and why:
Not piles – of shit – anymore, I mean. That’s a secondary discipline, demanding the proper identification of source… Horse, cow, dog, rat. Those are obvious enough to the untrained eye. But what about anteater or sloth?… I prefer the bowl… the human kind….18
Burok in conversation with an unnamed nobleman, or priest of ranking or another:
I mean, the initial blast sprayed in a particular pattern…I gauge the pressure to be a six on the Anal Discharge Scale, maybe even six point five… Color is not consistent, and this is of more interest. In divination terms that is… there are shade gradients to consider, as well as viscosity and hydrodynamic flow measures, which need to be taken into account.19
[Steven Erikson: Confession time. Burok’s profession was inspired by a conversation I had once with the wife of a fellow Fantasy author who shall remain unnamed, wherein she described (perhaps in a state of bewildered unease, as if seeking confirmation to her notion of ‘Is that strange? It seems strange to me. Is it, though?’) her husband’s habit of product-in-bowl examination every morning, followed by a detailed discourse on the details of said defecation, over (gulp!) breakfast.
An inherited habit, as it turned out, for her father-in-law did (and said) precisely the same thing upon a fateful, revelational visit, underscoring the ritual component to the whole shebang.
Now, this was a few years ago now, and for the life of me I can’t recall my response to the query. Was it strange? Is it? Well, you tell me. In any case, when plunging my memories, why, nothing rises to the surface. I like to think I said something like, ‘Oh, some might think so, to be sure. Mind you, since fecal examination is now a lucrative component of medical testing, said results surely examined with all the deliberation and precision of an augury, why, the language of prediction must be redolent with divinatory elements. One could say, in fact, that the language of shit is big business these days, with multitudes of labs springing up like mushrooms to serve its needs (at least on paper).
Curious, isn’t it, the things that inspire?
My advice to beginning writers? Go with the flow, who knows where and when something useful might pop up.]
[Mame Bougouma Diene: Or possibly poop out.
What is there to add to such potent advice from a master himself, who learned from a master, who learned from his father. Would we all be so lucky to bask in ancestral knowledge, dissolving in the sticky afterglow of redolent wisdom.
While I discourage would-be readers (again if there are any, and if any made it to this point, inching their way down the twisted tunnels of the entrails of the mind, mostly Steve’s to be fair) to take this at face value, for obvious reasons. Yet I would still invite them to ponder upon the eminent conclusion that one can only reach after shaking all material, moral, ethical and tasteful binds.
Summarized as below.]
Whether religio or superstitio, there can be no doubt that in the flickering porta-potty light of Burok’s words, we stand in the presence of a master. Whose attention to his craft borders on artistry, with a sensitivity and tolerance to odors, only few of us will ever attain.
It is both fitting and ironic that Burok couldn’t read the signs of his own demise but for bloated constipation, and while his gift is now lost to a world of internal plumbing, scented toilet paper and compost heaps, the essence, nigh soul of manuromancy, remains every time we rise from the bowl and turn to gaze upon our offering in pride, shame or dare I say, hope for a lighter day.
Footnotes
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex ↩︎
- [Mame Bougouma Diene: Not to my knowledge, Steven, no, except that Crement is a cheap form of French sparkling wine that, by and large, tastes much like excrements, but that would be a reverse correlation.] ↩︎
- Presumably the spicier the more likely a manuromancer will get fresh readings. ↩︎
- Ivan Starr (1992). “Chapters 1 and 2 of the bārûtu”. State Archives of Assyria Bulletin. 6: 45–53. ↩︎
- Walter Burkert, 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Thames and Hudson), p. 51. ↩︎
- Beard, et al., volume 1, pp.22-24, 27-28 ↩︎
- Livy, VI. 41: auspiciis hanc urbem conditam esse, auspiciis bello ac pace domi militiaeque omnia geri, quis est qui ignoret? ↩︎
- The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter VII: “The Mirror of Galadriel” ↩︎
- Created for the needs of this essay. ↩︎
- Also created for the needs of this essay. ↩︎
- The History of Blind Diviners in Korea – A Historical Overview of the Changing Perceptions and Organizational Activities of Blind Diviners in Korea – Tintin Appelgren – Stockholm University 2021 ↩︎
- This is all, for lack of a better word, utter and complete bulls@%t, from the Latin: Tauri Fecalis ↩︎
- Not to be confused with “manure – romancing”, romancing with manure, which is apparently a thing in very private circles in dark corners of the internet. ↩︎
- Magic in Merlin’s Realm: A History of Occult Practices in Britain, Dr. Francis Young, Cambridge University Press; New edition (3 Mar. 2022) ↩︎
- “…and aren’t the stars nought but gleaming turds?” Unknown. ↩︎
- “The Groom of the Stool had (to our eyes) the most menial tasks; his standing, though, was the highest …” quoted in Patterson, Orlande (1982). Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard UP. p. 330 ↩︎
- Burok Densetsu, Book I, Chapter III, Hideoshi Takumaru (1331) ↩︎
- Burok Densetsu, Book I, Chapter VII, Hidesohi Takumaru (1331) ↩︎
- Burok Densetsu, Book III, Chapter II, Hidesohi Takumaru (1336) ↩︎
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