Arithmancy, Etc.

[rainy_lilac at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 14652

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Margaret Dean <margdean at e...> wrote:
> Indigo wrote:
>  
> > Arithmancy sounds, to me at least, like a magickal way to deal 
with
> > math.
> > 
> > Anyone?
> 
> "Arith-mancy" would be divination by means of numbers.  Anything
> with a "-mancy" suffix is divination of some sort:  e.g.
> "cheiromancy" is a fancier word for palmistry, "oneiromancy" is
> divination by means of dreams, etc.
> 
> 


Or how about Necromancy? *grins* God, I love http://www.onelook.com!

necromancy   noun [U] 
the act of communicating with the dead in order to discover what is 
going to happen in the future, or black magic magic involving evil 
spirits used for bad purposes.

The suffix -mancy yielded the following:

 [Middle English from Old French -mancie, from Late Latin -manta, from 
Greek manteia, -manteia, from manteuesthai, to prophesy, from
 mantis, prophet; see men-1 in Indo-European Roots.] 


My big question is this:  Hermione made much about how Divination and 
fortunetelling is such an inexact science-- NOTHING like Arithmancy! 
Now we find that Arithmancy is simply another form of divination. So 
why is it taught separately from Trelawny's class?

Maybe JKR was just being casual with the word (how unlike her though!) 
and really intended Arithmancy to be the magical equivalent of higher 
math (and a science!) That is the image I have anyway.

I am also left with this interesting image of Hermione's father doing 
numerical divination in his spare time....

Suzanne, Gryffindor