Botanomancy

Botanomancy is a form of divination in which plants or parts of plants are used to obtain omens or answers to questions. Historical descriptions include writing questions on leaves or branches, exposing inscribed leaves to the wind, observing whether a living plant flourishes or wilts, and burning plant material.

Modern dictionaries sometimes use the term more narrowly for divination by burning branches or leaves. This form overlaps with pyromancy, because the fire or the behaviour of the burning plant material supplies the omen. Older sources, however, applied botanomancy to a wider range of divinatory practices involving plants.

Name and history of the term

The name derives ultimately from Ancient Greek botanē, meaning a herb or plant, and manteia, divination. The French lexical database of the Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales records the form botanomantie in François Rabelais's Tiers Livre of 1546. The spelling botanomancie is documented in the French Encyclopédie in 1751.

The word was also established in English by the seventeenth century. Thomas Blount's 1656 dictionary Glossographia included the entry "Botanomancy (botanomantia)", which it defined simply as divination by herbs.

The meaning was not consistently restricted to a particular procedure. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dictionaries and encyclopedias described plant divination in different ways, while twentieth-century occult reference works increasingly associated botanomancy with the burning of particular plants.

Historical descriptions

Inscribed branches

The 1751 Encyclopédie described botanomancy as divination using plants and shrubs. According to its account, branches or twigs of vervain, heath, fig and other plants were inscribed with the name and question of the person consulting the diviner.

The encyclopedia also acknowledged uncertainty about the actual means of obtaining the answer. It stated that the authorities on which its account depended did not explain what signs were interpreted and suggested that the response may have been pronounced by a priest or diviner. It associated heath with Apollo, whose functions in Greek religion included prophecy and divination.

This account is significant because it does not describe the plants as being burned. It instead treats the inscription of the question on plant material as the central element of the practice.

Leaves and wind

Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language gave a different procedure. Webster described botanomancy as an ancient form of divination especially associated with sage and fig leaves. A person's name and question were written on leaves and the leaves were then exposed to the wind. Letters that remained were assembled and interpreted as the answer.

The nineteenth-century lexicographical tradition continued to associate the term particularly with sage and fig leaves, rather than exclusively with fire.

Burning branches

Lewis Spence's 1920 An Encyclopaedia of Occultism described botanomancy specifically as a method involving the burning of branches of vervain and briar. Questions were carved onto the branches before they were burned.

This became a common definition in later reference literature. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology similarly describes a method based on burning vervain and briar branches bearing the practitioner's questions, while also mentioning variants involving leaves scattered in a strong wind.

The contemporary Collins English Dictionary gives the narrower definition of botanomancy as divination in which branches or leaves are burned. Under this usage, botanomancy may be regarded as a plant-specific form of pyromantic divination.

Divination using a living plant

The term has also been used by historians of magic for practices in which no plant material is burned or scattered. In his study of medieval Jewish folk religion, historian Joshua Trachtenberg classified as botanomancy a procedure intended to determine whether a contemplated undertaking would succeed.

In the procedure recorded by Trachtenberg, the practitioner was instructed to find a broad-leaved yellow mallow after sunset on a Monday. After ritual actions performed while facing east, a charm was recited asking the plant to remain in bloom if the proposed undertaking would succeed or to droop if it would fail. The practitioner returned the following morning and interpreted the condition of the plant as the answer.

Trachtenberg discussed the practice in the context of divination among medieval European Jews and treated it alongside other techniques for obtaining signs about future events. His use of the term illustrates the broader scholarly sense of botanomancy as divination through plants rather than exclusively through burning them.

Scope and related forms

Because historical sources describe several different procedures, botanomancy functions both as the name of specific practices and as a general term for plant-based divination. The common feature is the use of a plant, or some part or condition of a plant, as the medium from which an omen is obtained.

Some more narrowly named forms of divination overlap with this broader concept. Daphnomancy concerns divination associated with laurel, while forms that depend principally on interpreting fire belong more generally to pyromancy. Capnomancy instead concerns the interpretation of smoke. The terminology therefore depends in part on whether a source classifies a rite according to the material being used or according to the phenomenon being interpreted.

The historical record does not support a single universal system of botanomantic interpretation. Reference works from different periods describe substantially different plants, procedures and signs under the same name.

See also

• Methods of divination
• Daphnomancy
• Pyromancy
• Capnomancy