ichthyomancy

• icthiomancy
• icthyomancy

From ichthyo- +‎ -mancy.

ichthyomancy (uncountable)

1. Divination interpreting the appearance and behaviour of fish. A form of augury.
2. Divination interpreting the entrails of fish. A form of aruspicy.

• 1610, Ioannes Lodovicus Vives, chapter 35, in St. Augustine, translated by John Healey, S^t/ Augustine, of the Citie of God, With the Learned Comments of Io. Lod. Vives‎, George Eld, page 294:

  Diuination generally was done by diuers means: either by Earth, Geomancy: or by fire, Pyromancy [...] or by fiſhes, Icthyomancy (this Apuleius was charged with:) [sic.] or by the twinckling and motions of the eies called Saliato

• 1693, François Rabelais, translated by Thomas Urquhart, Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel Translated from the French into English by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Le Motteux‎, volume II, London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press, published 1934, page 124, III.XXV:

  By Ichthiomancy, in ancient times so celebrated, and put in use by Tiresias and Polydamas, with the like certainty of event as was tried of old at the Dina-ditch within that grove consecrated to Apollo, which is in the Territory of the Lycians.

• 1920, Lewis Spence, An Encyclopædia of Occultism‎, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, page 223:

  Ichthyomaney [sic.] : Divination by the inspection of the entrails of fish.