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Literomancy, from theLatinlitero-, 'letter' +-mancy, 'divination', is a form offortune-telling based on written words, or, in the case of Chinese,characters. A fortune-teller of this type is known as aliteromancer. (simplified Chinese:测字;traditional Chinese:測字;pinyin:cèzì)
When practicing literomancy, the client puts up asubject, be it a single character or a name. The literomancer then analyzes the subject, the client's choice of subject or other information related to the subject, along with other information he sees in the client or that the client supplies to arrive at adivination.
Some literomancers can read the curves and lines of a signature as signed by an individual, just as a professionalhandwriting analyst might, but uses instinct and divination techniques rather than applied analysis skills.
As a superstition, literomancy is practised in Chinese-speaking communities and known as测字;測字;cèzì. The subjects of a literomancy are traditionally single characters, plus the requesting person's name—it is often believed that the glyphs inChinese names bear particular portents. In modern times, elements such as foreign words or even more recently,e-mail addresses andinstant message handles have come into use as a subject.
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