Illustration of the Dutch explorer Joris van Spilbergen meeting King Vimaladharmasuriya I of Kandy (in modern Sri Lanka) from a 1602 book – used for the Stranger King article in Wikipedia
(10) XENOMANCY
“A prophet is never accepted in his home town”
The divination and magic of strangers, stranger kings, stranger things…and aliens?
Unlike gynomancy, Wikipedia’s list of methods of divination includes xenomancy or divination by strangers, but there is nothing beyond its mere inclusion in the list.
Similarly to gynomancy, however, it might be defined in one of two ways – as divination of strangers, or as divination by strangers. In other words, the stranger as omen or oracle, portent or prophet – the stranger as divinatory object or the stranger as divinatory (or magic) figure.
In the first, the querent divines their answer from the appearance or characteristics of strangers. And to be honest, it doesn’t seem to offer much as a method of divination, much less a school of magic, except as something akin to that game of anticipating the color of the next car one sees driving past.
Of course, strangers arriving at one’s home have more of an import, but it would probably be a safe bet for a diviner to foresee trouble, particularly if the strangers are armed.
The latter – where the stranger is the diviner or magical figure – has far more potential. The wandering stranger was basically Odin’s schtick – and he was hardly alone among gods, angels or kings in that. Even Jesus pulled this trick, accompanying two of his followers unrecognized after his resurrection, only to vanish when they recognised him.
My featured quote was also by Jesus, who turned out to be the biggest stranger prophet of all for the Roman Empire, among various cults of mysterious strangers from the east, and of course beyond that to the world.
In the Bible, Jonah played a similar role on a smaller scale as stranger prophet to the Assyrian Empire – everyone remembers him being swallowed by a “fish” but forgets why he was swallowed in the first place, because he was trying to shirk his role as a stranger prophet.
And then there’s the theory of stranger kings, a theory developed by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, essentially as to ‘native’ peoples accepting foreign rulers (particularly in the context of European colonialism) – a theory which may well overlap with stranger prophets or strangers as magical figures.
Xenomancy has intriguing fantasy narrative potential as underlying either divination or magic – that people can practice divination or use magic but only as strangers away from their homeland, but the most common trope involves them being in another world altogether, from portal fantasy in literature to isekai in Japanese manga or anime. Two examples spring readily to mind – Narnia (although there they are more stranger kings or heroes) and the Thomas Covenant Chronicles.
It even has intriguing SF narrative potential, particularly when one uses xeno- for its most common contemporary application to aliens – aliens as divinatory or magic figures to humans (or perhaps vice versa). One could even conjure up a contemporary form of xenomancy of divination (or magic) using alien or UFO sightings or lore.
Of course, fantasy often does much the same, but for particular fantasy races with respect to humans – elves effectively being a magical or semi-divine race to the more mundane humans or hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. For that matter, divinatory or magical aliens in SF often tend to be effectively space elves.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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