Extispicy

Extispicy definition

An ancient practice known in Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Assyria, and Greece and Rome involving the divination of sacrificial animals from the guts. Currently, there are still cultures that make animal sacrifices, for example in Nepal you can meet the practice of looking at the shape and color of chicken lungs that can predict disease or happiness.

Extispicy can be considered under several names as a subordinate category of anthropomancy and the superior art of Haruspic iny.

However, the terms Extispicy and Extispication are used directly for this method .

Extispicy is one of those methods that are gruesome and have no moral foundation.

It is based on divination from the guts of animals offered to gods. Especially the livers are taken into account, but also other bowels such as the heart, lungs or intestines are taken into account.

One method was based on smoking the liver and observing the behavior of the flames to draw a divine prophecy.

Divination based on the entrails of animals was a common practice practically throughout the ancient world. It was mainly based on liver analysis, but then there is a method called hepatomancy, extispicy is a more general term. Importantly, these divination were considered to be one of the most accurate and had an impact on important military and social decisions.

Unfortunately, in the procession of divination evolution, especially in the times before our era, also sacrifice of people, including children and virgins, was practiced. Even in what seems to be a civilized Rome, this practice was followed, but this topic was further described in another entry.