Tyromancy? - MysticWicks Online Pagan Community and Spiritual Sanctuary

Flar's Freyja · #1 June 29th, 2002, 12:05 PM

Okay....you've got to be kidding, right?

Tyromancy

Also known as Tiromancy and Typomancy, it is divination by the patterns formed by the coagulation of cheese.

All I can find on this one is the definition. Does anyone have more information?

***Flaire-FireStar*** · #2 June 29th, 2002, 01:01 PM

I was looking this up before....Really, I haven't found much info on it. There's this bit:

Quote:

Tyromancy

(Also known as Tiromancy)
How do you like your cheese? Swiss, Cheddar, stinky? Take pieces of cheese and attach little notes to them with possible answers to your question (or simply remember which is which). Place the hunks of cheese into a rat's or a mouse's cage and wait to see which piece of cheese is eaten first.

Another version is to attach the answers to your pieces of cheese and set them aside. The first piece to turn mouldy gives you your answer.

http://www.serenapowers.com/index.html

And that's all I really have. *shrugs* I'd love to hear if anyone else has more info on it.

Flar's Freyja · #3 June 29th, 2002, 07:27 PM

The first piece that turns moldy is the answer?

Thanks for going through the trouble to look for it - at least you found more than I did!

***Flaire-FireStar*** · #4 June 29th, 2002, 10:34 PM

I was going to try it, but I couldn't think up a yes or no question.

It wasn't a problem...I already had that site bookmarked when I was reading up about it before. I did another search today, but there isn't really much more on it ~ most sites just say "Tyromancy: divination with cheese" or something like that.

Too bad though, it could be really interesting.

Mithrea · #5 July 1st, 2002, 12:06 AM

I would think the last one to go moldy would be the good answer . . .

**Xander67** · #6 July 1st, 2002, 12:46 AM

according to Eva Shaw's Book "Divining the future"

she covers most any type of divination from a-z

It is not so much Practiced today, but was widely practived during mideval times. Because there were no food preservatives, the cheese of the middle ages probably bore very little resemblance to what we are used to buying in the market today.
In addition to the usual spoilage, cheese was also blended specificaly to accumulate mold spores. as with blue cheese, early cheese makers also processed the cheese less so it naturally came with more holes.

The exact mature of the divination process has been lost in time, but most likely the mold or holes were "read" much like one reads tea leaves or coffee grounds. For example, after poseing a question to the universe, if one saw a heart shape in the cheese it might mean love. If a letter was seen, it could have indicated that love was on the way. The image of a baby often indicated an unexpected change or series of interruptions. An egg, or perhaps a basket of eggs, might reveal properity beyond one's hopes and dreams.
© Eva Shaw "Divining the future , prognostication from astrology to Zoomancy"

I did some reasearch lol and thought it would be interesting