International Workshop: “Techniques of Prediction I: Chronomancy”

Erlangen, Germany
May 7th – 8th 2013


Convenors: Prof. Dr. Michael Lackner (IKGF director), Prof. Dr. Andrea Bréard (Univ. Heidelberg, Univ. Lille 1, IKGF Former Visiting Fellow)
Location: Senatssaal (Schloss, Schlossplatz 4, 91054 Erlangen)

Our workshop series’ focus is upon techniques of inductive or highly rationalized divination, modes of divination that do not depend entirely (or not at all) on inspired

or visionary experience, but on a mental activity of the diviner with an established set, a logic of symbols or a code often formalized in the form of manuals, lists, tables or diagrams. We wish to explore the complexities of operations involved in the organization and production of predictions, constituted of symbolic, logical, formal and instrumental instants.

 

Chronomancy: the Science of the Right Time
In a first session, we want to bring into a dialogue specialists working on chronomantic techniques in different cultural realms. While encouraging a comparative approach, our aim is not to uncover universal epistemic values, but instead to proceed experimentally by particular case studies of divinatory techniques based on the quantification or manipulation of time. Confronting similar cases from different cultural realms will destabilize the taken-for-granted singularity and the supposed exceptional character of divinatory practices in a specific historical setting and cultural framework. It invites to rethink together the technical, intellectual and material aspects and the traces that illuminate chronomantic practices (including astrological calculations in hemerology), their agents and their rational modes of knowledge production to determine auspicious and inauspicious moments for certain categories of human activities.

Program:

Tuesday, May 7, 2013, 1:00 pm – 6:30 pm

1:00 pm: Introduction (Michael Lackner, director; Andrea Bréard, Univ. Heidelberg, Univ. Lille 1, IKGF Former Visiting Fellow)
1:30 pm: Alexander Jones (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University): Ephemerides and Evaluations of Days in Later Greco-Roman Astrology
3:00 pm: Coffee Break
3:30 pm: Stephan Heilen (Universität Osnabrück): Foundation Horoscopes from Greco-Roman Antiquity to the Renaissance
5:00 pm: David Juste (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften): Chronomancy in Medieval Europe: the Latin Corpus before the Arabs

Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 9:30 am – 1:00 pm

9:30 am: Matthias Hayek (CRCAO, Université Paris Diderot): Correlating Time and Space: the Role of Temporal Parameters in Japanese Arithmomancy and Hemerology
11:00 am: Martin Gansten (Lund University): Chronocrator Systems in Perso-Indian Annual Horoscopy
12:30 pm: Final Discussion
1:00 pm: Lunch Break

For further information please refer to our website at External Link


 

 

 

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