The Future and Moles September 15, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Modern , trackback
Weak old humanity has long tried to wring drops of the future out in the present by: cutting open live calves, watching birds, reading palms, throwing bamboo rods and, well, hundreds of other methods. It is rarely that Beach comes across a form of divination that has most others beaten. His reference work is a mean eighteenth-century chapbook and there are in truth only a couple of thousand words given over to this science, but with trembling we introduce you to prophecy by mole…
It should be quite straightforward. You strip the man or the woman visiting you naked and then examine their moles. These then correspond with certain destinies. So a random example. You have a mole on your forehead? Wonderful you ‘shall grow rich, and obtain great possessions, being beloved by… friends and neighbours’.
If it were that simple the mole-seeker’s science would be a very simple one. But there are two subtleties. First, for reasons that frankly Beach does not understand (and honestly if you do he’d rather not know) moles have different meanings for men and women. For example, if you have a mole on the left side of the windpipe, then that means that if you are a man you ‘will suffer much by falls and bruises’; but if you are a woman ‘it prognosticates danger by water or lightning’. Well, both at least involve misfortune. Sometimes, the differences are almost binary though. A mole on the chin of a woman, denotes her to be of hasty, crabbed, ill-natured disposition; but on a man it denotes mildness.
Second, there are some very peculiar passages about matching moles on different parts of the body. This is where things get complicated. Perhaps the idea is that the face, neck and head are a microcosm of the entire body, in the same way that some modern healers claim to understand the body from the soles of our feet. But really no idea.
A mole on the right side of the face behind the eye, denotes another on the right side of the buttock or haunch; signifying much honour and preferment to befall a man; and to a woman, much praise for her virtue, and a continuation of prosperity.
Moleosophy dates back to Greek times. This is not just conjecture or invention, we have a Greek text. The Greeks, though, were more serious and covered birthmarks too.
Any other unusual forms of divination: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
