Hippomancy

Germanic and Slavic hippomancy rituals have many points in common, in particular the sacralization of a horse that is exceptional in terms of size and coat, and that lives near a sanctuary.

The vision of omens in the attitude of a horse and the belief in its power of divination remain commonplace, particularly in the countryside of Germanic countries during the 19th century, in Central Asia, and in the Ozarks mountains in the United States today.

[4] For Marc-André Wagner, hippomancy in the strict sense of the word must be ritualized and stems from a vision of the horse as a messenger animal for divinities or other higher powers.

[13] While the ancient Greeks seem to have been unaware of ritual hippomancy, Latin sources attest to the importance the Romans attached to equine predictions, particularly in the context of warfare.

[14] The Romans' defeat at the hands of the Parthians was predicted by the behaviour of Crassus'[15] horse and that of Lucius Caesennius Paetus,[16] which were said to have bolted when crossing the Euphrates.

[17] According to the same work, Carthage was founded on the site where the exiles of Tyre unearthed a horse skull at the suggestion of Juno, a sign of war victories and abundance for centuries to come.

Gaius Flaminius is said to have fallen senselessly with his horse in front of a statue of Jupiter Stator, sparking the suspicion of his troops, who saw this as a bad omen and asked him not to engage in combat.

When Achilles returns to battle, determined to avenge Patroclus, Xanthe lowers his head and lets his mane hang down, while Hera has just endowed him with human speech.

[27][28] It reflects the great importance of the horse in Persian thought (the future Iranians),[29] and perhaps the role of diviner accorded to military riders.

[32] It is possible that the motif of hippomancy was added at a later date to the story of Darius' accession to power (or misunderstood by the Greeks),[29] because it fits in with the vision he wanted to impose, that of the chosen one of the divinity Ahura Mazda.

In his two Vitae, Claude Sterckx notes the presence of horses that cause the death of impious warriors who have defied divine power after a saint's prediction, notably in the story of Neachtan.

[40] Oracle-horse rituals are mentioned by Tacitus in La Germanie (98), who describes 'pure' white horses kept in hedgerows and woods, 'fed by the state' and exempt from any other duties.

[43] The Excerpta Latina Barbari also mentions these practices – although the source is unclear,[44] as does the Inddiculus superstitionum et paganiarum (vii century), which seems to indicate that divination by horse was very common among Germanic peoples from east of the Rhine.

The Landnámabók (book on the colonization of Iceland) recounts how an undin predicted to Grímr that his son would establish a town where the mare Skálm would lie down with her load.

Having found numerous traces around the Baltic Sea, he formulated two hypotheses: the preservation of ancient Indo-European beliefs, or a specific development,[49] the second hypothesis being supported by the Germanist Marc-André Wagner.

[43] The priests dug the earth, threw out lots, covered them with turf, planted two crossed spear points in the ground, and summoned a divine and sacred white horse, which they worshipped in an attitude of respectful submission.

[50] The Western Slavs keep their "sacred horses" in their main sanctuaries, and call on them for every important event,[51] particularly before pillaging and to resolve questions relating to worship.

[57] In 1168, the Danes conquered the island of Rügen and commented on the use of the white oracular horse of the god Svetovit in the temple of Arkona, involving three groups of erected spears.

Visible proof of this, according to them, was the fact that this horse, which stayed in the stable at night, often showed traces of sweat and mud at dawn, as if it had traveled long distances after returning from exercise".

[62] The Christianization of hippomancy involved both a struggle in the field and the recovery of rituals, as the Church wished to control or eradicate this heritage of paganism.

– Adamnan von Hi, Vita S. Columbae III, 23This Christianization of hippomancy has parallels with that of 'divining horses': the many ancient legends that attributed to horses the power to discover hidden springs or to make them gush forth with a blow of their hooves, such as the Hippocrene spring by Pegasus, shift this power from the animal to a divine will controlling the animal, or to the will of its rider.

While white horses are most often chosen according to ancient sources, Perceforest's foal is black and the ritual is evil, due to the unwillingness of Sarra's spell to respond.

[72] Similarly, in Norse mythology, the horse Grani displays gifts of divination (or telepathy) when Gudrun comes to him to confide her grief over Siegfried's death, and discovers that "the stallion already knows".

[nb 1][73] In the Saga of Arrow-Odd, the soothsayer Heid tells Oddr that he will die because of the head of the horse Faxi, which is white with a mane of a different color to its body.

[80] Numerous stories in popular country folklore also tell of the danger of spying on horses in an attempt to obtain their prophecy on these days.

[91] In Kyrgyzstan, the Er-Töshtük epic, inspired by shamanism and known from oral sources collected from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, features the marvelous horse Tchal-Kouyrouk.

Artemidorus of Ephesus (1st century) proposed a very broad definition, depending on the dreamer's profession and social status: dreaming of riding a horse is generally a good omen.

The animal can have very broad meanings depending on the context: it signifies freedom if seen in a meadow, ease in the stable, and presages great future social success if seen saddled but without a rider.

[98] John William Dunne, a British aeronautical engineer born in 1899, said he had dreamt of a mad horse racing down a road he remembered the day before such an accident occurred.

[100] According to Marc-André Wagner, the meaning given to finding a horseshoe is a form of hippomancy, as horse-related objects are also considered to be harbingers of good fortune.