THE MAGICAL PAPYRI & THEURGY · LESSON 4 OF 6 · 13 MIN
Lamp and Dream Oracles
Lychnomancy, the seer and the lamp, requests for a dream written on a wick — and a safe modern version of each.
The magicians of Roman Egypt had two favourite doors to the gods: the flame of a lamp and the dream. Both appear again and again in the Greek and Demotic papyri.
The lamp and the boy
Lychnomancy — divination by lamp — is described at length in the Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden (3rd century CE). The pattern is repeated with variations:
- a clean room, a new lamp, a white wick (often with instructions that it must not be red), fine oil;
- a young boy as the seer, sitting before the lamp with his eyes closed or gazing into it, while the magician recites invocations over him;
- the god — often Anubis — appearing in the flame, to whom the magician puts questions through the boy.
Bowl divination (lekanomancy) worked in the same way with water and oil (see Water, Crystal, Flame & Smoke). The use of a child as the medium is one we leave firmly in the past.