Candle wax
Carromancy, or ceromancy, is the practice of divination by wax. Typically it involved dripping wax into water and observing the shapes that formed as the wax cooled. While it recurs frequently in early modern lists of divinatory practices, records of its use are elusive. When mentions of wax come up in relation to magical practices, the reference is typically to wax effigies: alleged witches were often accused of creating and harming images, in the belief that the injury would transfer to the person depicted.
Similar methods of divination do seem to have been in use. In 1633, James Knarstoun of Orkney was tried for witchcraft. One of the accusations against him was that he had offered to use a ‘heart-cake of lead’ to uncover knowledge about the illness of a neighbour’s daughter: this likely means that he moulded a shape in molten lead and cast it into water.1Records of Orkney Sheriff Court, Orkney Archives, SC10/1/5, f. 88r. We are grateful to Prof. Peter Marshall for this reference.
A related practice was oomancy, or divination using eggs. The yolk and the white of the egg were separated, and the white was placed in water; the diviner then observed the shapes that formed. It is unclear whether this was practised much, or at all, in Britain, but it did appear in New England. The Massachusetts minister John Hale recorded that a girl from Salem ‘did try with an egg and a glass to find her future husband’s calling; till there came up a coffin, that is, a spectre in likeness of a coffin. And she was afterward followed with diabolical molestation to her death; and so died a single person.’ He added that this case was ‘a just warning to others, to take heed of handling the Devil’s weapons, lest they get a wound thereby’.2John Hale, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (Boston, 1702), pp. 132-3.
1805 engraving of the witch of Endor with a candle.3Engraving by J. Kay (1805), after A. Elsheimer (1578-1610), Wellcome Collection.
Think of a query about your future, or some other occult knowledge. Watch a video below of wax being poured. Do you see any suggestive shapes or patterns?
Scepticism from the Puritan cleric John Gaule, in a work published in 1652.4John Gaule, Pus-mantia the Mag-astro-mancer (London, 1652), pp. 165-6.
What difference betwixt astromancy … and all these after-named? … stareomancy, or divining by the elements; aeromancy, or divining by the air; pyromancy, by fire; hydromancy, by water … cleromancy, by lots … chiromancy, by the hands … cephaleonomancy, by brayling [broiling] of an ass’s head … carromancy, by melting of wax … typomancy, by the coagulation of cheese … The question is not about the difference of all these … but whether they be not of like malefical [malicious] sorcery, for main substance and formality?
Extract from François Rabelais’s satire The Third Book of Pantagruel (1546).6The Works of Rabelais, trans. Thomas Urquhart and Peter Anthony Motteux (Derby, 1894), bk. 3, ch. 25, pp. 303-4.
“Have you a mind,” quoth Herr Trippa, “to have the truth of the matter yet more fully and amply disclosed unto you by pyromancy, by aeromancy … Come hither, and I will show thee, in this platter-full of fair fountain-water, thy future wife, lechering, and secroupierising (buttocking it) with two swaggering ruffians, one after another … By ceromancy, where, by the means of wax dissolved into water, thou shalt see the figure, portrait, and lively representation of thy future wife…”
