Icthyomancy - Predicting the Future from Fishes

Divination is mainly understood as foretelling the future; however in the original sense, it also meant uncovering some kind of hidden knowledge or providing answers to complex questions by means of omens and portents. Very often these omens were drawn from the behavior of living creatures like animals and fish. Thus the form of divination which is based on the observation of fishes and related interpretations is known as Icthyomancy.

Icthyomancy uses fishes and various related aspects to come up with prophecies about the future. The word is derived from the Greek ikhthus meaning fish and manteia meaning prophecy. Not much is known about the history of this form of divination except that it seems to have been common in the ancient cultures of Babylon, Phoenicia and China.

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Icthyomancy could be practiced in two differing ways. The more common one was perhaps that which examined the entrails and the head of the fish in order to draw portents for the future. Various parts of the fish anatomy like the egg sac, the brain and intestines were considered to hold specific meanings or answers according to the question asked or the context of divination.

According to the second method of icthyomancy, seers would observe the appearance and behaviour of live fish as they swam and make accordingly make predictions for the future. Part of this practice involved the seers placing fish in a consecrated bowl, pool or aquarium and noting how it swam or moved. In fact cultures in Asia Minor and Syria during the time of 1600 BC to 1200 AD were supposed to have made predictions for the future according to the movement of eels in water tanks. Among the well-known practitioners of icthyomancy, at least according to legend, were Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes as well as Polydamas who was the friend and lieutenant of Hector during the Trojan War. One of the historical accounts of the practice of icthyomancy comes from the book “Glossographia” written in 1656 by Thomas Blount, the famous English antiquarian and lexicographer of the seventeenth century.