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Austromantia
Spirits celestial influences and signs · A Chymical Dictionary
At a Glance
The word. Wind divination presented through a strongly critical description.
In this edition. A textual note records the reading of the 1650 printing and the editorial treatment.
A place to read. The historical definition below, 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 9; facsimile PDF page 337.
Historical Definition
Austromantia is an invented kind of superstition concerning the observation of winds. When the stars of winds break out with unusual violence, people who are more idle than rational pronounce a prediction of something to come.
Meaning
The entry names a practice and supplies the author’s evaluation of it. Unusual violence in the winds is treated by its practitioners as a sign of future events; the dictionary dismisses their reasoning and character. Both the observed occasion and the criticism belong to the historical evidence.
This distinction helps the reader separate a report of unusual weather from a claim that it foretells an event. The dictionary’s objection is directed at the move from one to the other. Its polemical wording should be attributed rather than adopted as the editor’s own judgement of every historical observer of winds.
Places to Read
Chaomancy. Divination in which the air supplies the signs.
Augurista. A diviner defined by media, bird signs and a hostile evaluation.
Præsagium. A significant sign understood as pointing toward a future event.
Historical source: 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 9; facsimile PDF page 337 — Facsimile
Sources. A Chymicall Dictionary (1650), s.v. Austromantia ; compare Chaomancy, Augurista, Præsagium