Nécromancie

The nécromancie (in Latin necromantia, in Greek νεκρομαντία) is a kind of Divination in which the expert seeks to call upon the spirit of deaths so that they enable us to know future events, or to acquire certain capacities. The word comes from the “dead” Greek νεκρός and μαντεία “divination”. A subsidiary significance is noticed in an alternative and antiquated form word, nigromancie , (coming from a popular etymology founded on Latin Niger, " noir") where one acquires the magic force of “dark capacities” while making use of corpses.

That which practices the nécromancie is a necromancian.

The nécromancie in the history

It may be that the nécromancie is in relation to the Shamanisme, which makes call of the spirits like the phantoms of the ancestors. The nécromancie is a rather complex magic practice which requires much time and material.

The historian Strabon (Strabo, xv νεκρομαντία) reports that the nécromancie was the most important form of the divination among people of Perse; and one believes that it was also widespread among the people of Chaldée (in particular among Sabéens or the admirers of stars), of Étrurie and Babylonia. The necromancians of Babylon themselves carried the name of Manzazuu or Sha' etemmu and the spirits which they called upon that of Etemmu.

In the Odyssey (XI, Nekyia), Ulysses goes on a journey to Hadès, in the underground world, and he calls upon the spirits of dead by using formulas which he had learned from Circé. Its intention was to call upon the shade of Tirésias, but he sees himself unable to call it that others come to help it.

The Bible contains also many references to the nécromancie. The Deutéronome (XVIII 9 12) puts the Jews explicitly keeps of it against the practice cananéenne divination by deaths. Account of this warning was not always taken: king Saul for example request in Pythonisse d' Endor to call upon the shade of Samuel.

Scandinavian mythology shows us also examples of nécromancie, as the scene of Völuspá where Odin makes return from dead the conspicuous one so that she tells him the future. In Grogaldr, the first part of Svipdagsmál, the Svipdag hero calls among deaths his/her Groa mother, so that she pronounces on him certain formulas.

At the XVIIe century the rosicrucian Robert Fludd describes the goetic nécromancie like a “diabolic trade with impure spirits, through rites filled up of criminal curiosity, songs and invocations sacrileges and the evocation of the hearts of deaths”.

Modern meetings, the Channelling and the Spiritisme pour in the nécromancie when one asks the spirit called upon of the revelations on the future events.

The nécromancie can be also presented in the form of a sciomancie, a branch of the theurgic magic.

The nécromancie is abundantly practiced in the Vaudou.

Internal bonds

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